


A World In the Making

by circumlocute, D4gm4rs, Dragoneisha, Grubbutts



Series: A World of Our Own [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angels, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Demons, Earth C (Homestuck), Explosions, F/F, F/M, Fictional Religion & Theology, M/M, Memory Alteration, Monsters, Multi, Mystery, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sea Monsters, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-20 04:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17615804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circumlocute/pseuds/circumlocute, https://archiveofourown.org/users/D4gm4rs/pseuds/D4gm4rs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragoneisha/pseuds/Dragoneisha, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grubbutts/pseuds/Grubbutts
Summary: The Game is over. They won. And so the Gods of this new world relax to enjoy the spoils of their labor.But three years after their jump into the future, they realize something has gone wrong. Their world is falling apart. The population is low, the sea is something to be feared, and everyone has sequestered themselves into their Kingdoms, with few towns outside.Five thousand years is a long, long time.





	1. Calm

**Author's Note:**

> dragon here. welcome to the first installment of AWOO.
> 
> this is my baby.... i love it. my artists were fantastic and my beta is a gift from god. welcome to AWOO, i hope you enjoy.

“It’s nice of you to walk me,” Jane half-laughs, swinging Roxy’s slim little hand to and fro, clasped in her own strong one. The bustle of the Carapace Kingdom is a background to their little chat, distance and focus scumbling it into a frame for their walk without interrupting it. She’s relieved to have this time with Roxy, to be true - she’s gotten so busy after taking over her own corporate enterprise, it’s hard to get a little girl time.

She’s missed her friend, honestly.

“No sweat, traitor,” Roxy teases, and Jane can’t help but roll her eyes. Here she goes again with the anti-corporate sentiment. It’s all in jest, she knows, but it really does get on her nerves!

Jane bumps her with a hip in warning. “Three strikes and I’ll throw you in anarchist jail.”

“More like malarkist jail, like, with malarkey in it. Anarchists don’t have jails, that’s the aim of anar-key, baby.”

Jane knows it’s a trap. Roxy does it on purpose. She knows not to get involved, but at the same time, she can’t resist a final word as they stop at the towering glass building that’ll be holding her meeting because it’s an opportunity to show off all the stuff Roxy taught her -

“You can’t try to lecture me on anarchism when in fact you’re just wrong, Roxy. An anarchist could just as easily have -”

“Oh em geeeee,” laughs Roxy, “I should never have taught you all that, you do this every tiiiiime. Roxem-soxem is too good a teacher,” she jokes, pecking Jane on the cheek and giving her a shove towards the shield-shaped glass doors. “And yes, they could have personal jails but it’s not the same. Go. Shoo. Do your capitalist traitor meeting.”

Jane doesn’t bother correcting her. Dirk and Roxy both have shown clear disinterest in how she runs her company, and she doesn’t expect to change their minds. Just how they were wired, after all. They don’t understand how important it is for her.

Reflecting on it as she enters, Jane barely notices the swooping atrium and bright sunlight filtering in through the transparent structures. It’s a gorgeous building, but she has more on her mind than architecture. Ironically, Dirk would enjoy this much more than she, especially now, when her head’s shot straight up through the glass ceiling and lodged itself firmly in a plateau of cirrocumulus.

She needs CrockerCorp to work out. 

Jane breezes past the registration desk of Icarus Incorporated, heads straight for the elevator, and shelters there. She uncaptchalogues her clipboard, with its pretty green-and-blue pen and the clinky keychain hanging off the clasp, and goes through the contract again, with an expert’s eye. There’s nothing in here that she has to argue against. She knows that already. But she still wants to read it over again, give herself a refresher, and definitely, absolutely not distract herself from the way Roxy’s words stick in her head.

Hmph.

It’s not her damn fault that they lived in such a hellscape. She feels bad enough about not believing them all that time ago, but this isn’t the same CrockerCorp that ruined the world, and yes, it’s likely hard to deal with the name hanging around, but…

It’s harder having _Hers_ hanging over Jane’s, goshdarn it all. That’s Jane’s name she ruined. And if it takes taking dear old Betty’s betrayal from her cold, slimy fingers and warping her creation into something beautiful is what it takes to wash it clean, well, Jane’s about to prove she’s a better corporate dynamo than the old witch ever was, and so there.

Jane shakes it off and steps out with a brilliant smile, bending to greet the crotchety old Prospitan with a handshake, and curtsying to return his bow. All this bowing stuff is really just too much. As much as she enjoys the assets (and to some extent, the worship, hoo hoo hoo) that come with being a god, the idolization gets to be nerve-wracking. Jane’s just lucky she’s very good at dealing with wracked nerves.

“Miss Crocker,” squeaks the hunched Prospitan, “a delight to see you! I was surprised to hear that you had already gotten it written up, I expected you to dawdle,” he says further, like he thinks she’ll respond well to being negged. She doesn’t.

“I didn’t,” Jane responds with an undertone of steel to her usual friendly demeanor. Corporate cooperation can be cutthroat. She just has to go with the flow.

She was born for this.

The Prospitan pauses, clicking his dulled talons against each other for a moment, and then turns to gesture her to the plush chair across from his own, just high enough for a small-run carapacian to see over the desk. She goes to take a seat, and her host bustles away, while Jane takes the time to set out her contract and a pen, just in case he needs one. (It’s only kind.)

“I, ah,” hums her contact, apparently called Stringent Negotiator today - she generally waits to see the nameplates before addressing her carapacian conversors in case it changes. “I have some tea, if you’d like. Two sugars, dearie?”

“One, please,” she corrects, turning to watch him as he carries a little silver tray over. It’s laden with three cute teacups. He sets it in front of Jane, and moves to open the tiny window, climbing up onto a stepstool to reach. Stringent Negotiator sets the third teacup on the windowsill, while Jane watches, amused. There are some strange customs in the Carapace Kingdom, but then, aren’t there everywhere? “Shall we get started?”

“Oh, yes. Now who’s dawdling,” jokes the Stringent Negotiator, who is not quite as stringent about his jokes as he is his negotiating. “Do you have the trades documented properly? Like we said, the likelihood of agreement without documentation is slim to none, sweetheart…”

Jane smiles while he prattles on, and quietly chants in her head that she isn’t allowed to eviscerate him physically or socially because of the pet names. As infuriating as the corporate jungle can be, she knows she can handle it.

This is what she was born for.

_

Kanaya flicks an olive at Rose, surreptitiously, and ignores the way that she casts a glare back to scold her. If she doesn’t look, Kanaya thinks, she can feign ignorance to Rose’s irritability. The perfect crime.

“Don’t throw your food,” Rose tells the two wrigglers, Torten and Malkat, while another olive beans her right in the back of the head. “We’ll cancel your playdate.”

“Hearing you say the word playdate is a feast to the aural clots,” Kanaya hums, amused. “I told you you’d do well with them.” She slips her arms around Rose’s sturdy waist and actually eats her final olive. The rest of them have gone somewhere on the floor, and she resolves to pick them up before they get squished. 

Rose sweeps a critical eye over their snacking foster grubs. She’d likely expected eventual wriggler-rearing, considering Kanaya’s devotion to the practice, but Kanaya worries on occasion that she doesn’t enjoy it as much as she pretends not to. No, Rose isn’t a born lusus, but she _is_ a clever woman who can handle almost anything that gets thrown at her, given time and care to handle the situation. Troubled wrigglers find a lot of solace in her.

It’s part of the reason Kanaya is so very fond of her. Red as sunrise.

“I manage,” hums Rose, trying to turn her head enough for a kiss. Kanaya moves to oblige, and then Rose’s tongue is in her ear. Fantastic. “Blegh.”

“Sophisticated as ever,” Kanaya deadpans, then gives her matesprit a quick shake. “Quit licking me. Your mammalian complexes are not quite as endearing as you think they are.”

The wrigglers finish stuffing themselves, and Torten starts snickering to Malkat about something even as Rose appears to attempt an aural wax buildup extraction with just the very tip of her tongue. 

“Mammalian? Ooh, you’re feisty today, aren’t you, my dearest, sweetest, most ethereal -”

“Stop.”

“ - and effervescent mate, light of my life, heart-stealer and -”

“Rose, the visitors are at the door.”

“- soul-taker, I thought you were a Sylph not a Thief -”

Kanaya gives up, tilting her head enough that Rose can’t try to fool about with her face or aural clots anymore, and just scoops Rose up in her arms. Rose prattles on, unbothered by her new position, as Kanaya heads to the door and opens it one-handed. She dims her usual glow to greet the wrigglers (it’s more comfortable that way.)

They squeal and run past her almost as soon as they get the door open, but then, that’s young girls for you. 

“Thanks for hosting the sleepover,” sighs their lusus, a tall, tired human Kanaya doesn’t remember the name of. He’s got half a head of hair, but that doesn’t exactly help. Lots of humans grow out only part of their hair. And some of them get old and sick and lose it, which really doesn’t help.

“It isn’t a problem. Why else live in a hive like this, if not for the thrill of scooping wrigglers off the top of the stairs scant seconds before their unfortunate toppling?” She pats Rose’s back, who hums in agreement, and then sets her down.

Rose grabs her arm and keeps her hunched a moment to kiss her cheek.

Kanaya is _gracious_ enough to allow such silliness before Rose slips off to monitor the brood, and she chats with the tired young lusus. It’s his first time watching children, but he’s happy to do it, even if he seems quite tired. And if the way he’s taken care of his brood is indication, he’s a perfect lusus - they are bright and cheerful wrigglers with the moral fiber that would impress a palmetto.

Kanaya takes the kid’s bags and offers a thanks as the human walks away - _Katsumi_ , that’s his name, it’s _Katsumi Hiyo_ , of course she didn’t remember it until he was already gone.

The next several hours are a whirlwind of setup, screamed songs she doesn’t know and doesn’t want to, and trying to keep all the sheets from being used for a pillow fort. By the time night shows it face, Kanaya is the pleasant sort of exhausted that comes from watching eight rambunctious young ladies five or so sweeps in age. The hive is a wreck. The girls shriek and scatter and junebug back to gossipping groups, calming only at the advent of nightfall. Even then, they gather to whisper. Kanaya thinks she hears snippets of horror stories, and she can see Rose clearly listening in from a room away, a small little smirk on her face. Rose likely taught their foster girls the lion’s share of their horrific tales.

Kanaya wouldn’t have it any other way.

“If you want to summon him, go to where the forests are burned to clear, where swill spills into the ocean, where the natural world loses its war against society…” 

“What are you _telling_ these wrigglers?” Kanaya leans over the back of Rose’s chair, combing her claws through her fine blonde hair just enough to mess up her part. Soft giggles come from both the woman she loves and the girls in the other room, almost exactly in time. 

Rose sets her book pages-down in her lap, and her head tilts back just enough to catch Kanaya in the reflection of those lavender eyes. The white sclera isn’t as startling as it once was. “Nothing worse than what they learn from society, my dear.”

Something about that pulls at Kanaya’s head, but she doesn’t think much about it.

“... and beg forgiveness for the wrongs you've done. He will appear…” There is a moment of silence, Rose and Kanaya relaxing with their heads tilted at almost the same angle to catch the tail end of their wriggler’s story. “... but you may not survive the ordeal!”

A few soft shrieks and gasps come from the room, and Torten tears like a nightflutterbeast out of the brooding caverns into the living room, diving under Kanaya’s skirt.

Kanaya barely has to look at her before she’s bursting into tears, clinging with utmost terror to Kanaya’s ankle. Poor thing’s always been a bit of a scaredy-meowbeast. But Torten wails her fear all the same, in the soft, serious way Torten always does.

A gasp, and a “Kanayaaa,” and a choke, and a, “Pleeaaasse,” and a whimper, and Torten finally spits out, “ _Endeki’s gonna get meeeee!_ ”

Rose gets up to go initiate curfew, beautiful precious Rose who makes herself scarce when feelings she doesn’t want to deal with happen, how pragmatic, and Kanaya wiggles her leg a little bit. 

“Is he now,” Kanaya hums thoughtfully. “Well, if this mysterious Endeki can survive your mother and I, he deserves you. Come now. Up.” She scoops her wriggler in her arms and extricates those stubborn graspers from her leg. Torten is set on her feet again, and the little troll sniffs and wipes her eyes.

“Yeah,” she agrees, with a final sniffle, as she looks up at Kanaya with shining eyes. “He could never get past you.”

Several screams rise from the hall.

“Rose,” calls Kanaya, raising her voice, “the wrigglers need to be put to bed, not _scared further._ Put away whatever it is you have.”

“... Yes, dear.”

_

“Losing it.”

“You aren’t.”

“I am. I’m losing it. In fact, it’s already lost! It flipped shits worse than an acrobat and scurried off to hide under a table.”

“You aren’t,” Sollux sighs, flipping a page, “and thinking you are is dumb, and you’re stupid.”

He doesn’t bother ducking when Karkat wings a plastic cup at him, knowing full well it’s going to go sailing over his shoulder. Karkat’s good at a lot of things, maybe, but throwing is nowhere near that list. If only his failure wouldn’t send him into an even deeper spiral, Sollux could enjoy it properly.

“Slobber on your own throbbing bonebulge,” Karkat demands, as Sollux pushes a pin through a streamer and into the popcorn ceiling with his psi. “You're not helping. You're the opposite of helping, you're just sitting there while I scramble like a barkbeast on polished tile and slip to bust my snout on the floor!”

“I still don't know why you wanted _me_ for party planning,” Sollux sighs, pushing to his feet. “Celebrating isn't my shit.”

Sollux can always tell when Karkat’s about to go nuclear. Instead of letting him, he plucks up a can of the dumb neon squirty shit the humans like so much - fuck, how many of these did Dave alchemise? There’s at least 27 here. This is ridiculous - and waits. He doesn’t have the mental, physical, or spiritual energy to let Karkat jack himself off with some ennui-ridden tirade about how bad he is at party planning, despite the fact that the parties he plans are pretty okay, he’s just a dumbass with no confidence. Which is relatable. And the reason Sollux bothered showing up at all.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Karkat begins.

Sollux subtly readies himself.

“What, I can’t ask you to _come to my hive_?? Here I am, trying to get enough work done to clean up this god damned oinkbeaststy -”

This is one of the cleanest hives Sollux has ever been in.

“- and what’s more, maybe I figured you’d be the one to spend time with me, huh? Oh, woe is me, I was fooled by the idea that Sollux _fuuuuuucking_ Captor might JUST -”

Perfect shot.

Sollux sprays silly string into Karkat’s mouth instead of letting him yell himself out.

Bliss. It’s even worth it when Karkat tries to suplex him.


	2. Nice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave asks questions. Jake meets a farmer. Terezi sniffs out a mystery.

This party is bumpin’.

The streamers have gotten caught in his hair a few times, as they seem to be slapped haphazardly in key walking locations, but overall Dave is pretty proud of how well Karkat did. Like, nice job. The lighting’s great, the food is tasty, and Dirk looks like a proud father with how well his DJbot is doing. Plus, Jade’s asking about his work. Score. 

“No, no,” Dave says, moving his hands in quick chopping motions like that’ll help explain things, “it’s not that. I couldn’t read it because of the JPEGs, man, it’s just too pixelated. This isn’t Law and Order: XXXVU, where I can just say “enhance” enough times to count the motherfucker’s nose hairs. This is real life, where JPEGed Liberties are really hard to read.”

“But you got something,” Jade asks, brow quirked. She has nice eyebrows. They grow into a fuzzy unibrow that’s just so cute, Dave can’t handle that shit. 

“Something about “fiends” or something. Like, the “fiends have spread to the mountains”? Might not have been plural? Might have been about goats? The Gift of Gab is nice and all, but when words don’t translate exactly, shit gets wild as the jungles, my man.” Dave rubs the back of his neck, most of his balance on his left foot instead of his right. He’s the picture of cool. The pinnacle of pacified. The ideal of ice cold. You know, like always.

“You look nervous,” Jade notes, her brows furrowing. “Are you okay? Is something up?”

Nothing like an Amazonian samoyed to ferret out your insecurities, huh?

“No, no, it’s not really anything. You know me, no problem Dave.” Not his best work. He can do better. “Just still thinking about it. Whatever was in there was important enough to carve onto a Liberty. Who’s gonna desecrate those gorgeous toes? Foot fetishists everywhere are gonna be so disappointed.” 

“Gross,” Jade whines, sticking her tongue out at him. Score. “I bet you wanna pick her grody toenails.”

“Excuse me.”

“Oh yeah, everybody! Dave’s jonesing for a pair of XXXL toenail clippers! Everybody check your pockets!” 

Dave tries to shove her, but she ducks easily out of the way. Damn it. “Leave Lady Liberty number 1492’s toes out of it, especially when a finger kink is like way funnier -”

Jade’s ears suddenly perk up to their highest point, and her head swivels towards the kitchen door. She claps a hand on Dave’s shoulder and slips past him. “Pretend all you want, but Jane just finished with the cake batter and I’m gonna go lick the spoon.”

A mixture of relieved and annoyed, Dave grumbles, and lets the crowd and the music carry him where it pleases.

It could be a lot of things that bring Dave to her side - fate, trust, the flow of the crowd, or how nice it feels to take in the tangled strands of Aradia’s influence on history - but he ends up idling in front of her, arms crossed.

She’s been absent, lately. She’s always absent, but Dave can tell it’s been for longer and longer. For her, if not for them. She’s ages older than the rest of them, a result of her dance through time and her waltz with Death, and Dave isn’t sure how he feels about it. He’s not even sure if he’s got a license to feel at all. But, hey, like, Time player to Time player, there’s got to be some kind of link there. Even if it feels a little bit like trying to hit on a third-grade math teacher.

“Hey,” says Dave, intelligently.

Aradia doesn’t lift her eyes from the grungy book in her lap - she’s actually floating crosslegged, which strikes Dave as just unnecessary. What a showoff. There’s no way she doesn’t know how fucking rad that looks. He tries again. “Yo, Aradia. Where’d you get this ancient text-looking shit? Does it have a map to the crystal skull tucked in the pages or something?”

She lifts her head, now, and fixes him with the same beaming smile she always does, fangs and the curves of her horns illuminated by the spinny-color-ball thing Roxy popped on the table when she walked in. For a moment, Aradia is edged in blues and greens, timeless in a way Dave hasn’t quite matched yet, like she’s both ten and ten thousand. Dave feels like he’s in over his head. Wow. Yikes. 

“If it did,” Aradia chuckles, “the odds of the skull not being pilfered by Jake already are quite low, don’t you think?”

She’s got one hell of a point. Dave can springboard off that easy. “You’d know if he did. He wouldn’t have been able to stop talking about it, and he’d probably have invited you along for the ride. Why fly when you can cut your way through dense jungles?”

“Sometimes you can see a bigger picture from the sky,” hums Aradia, with a twinkle in her eye. “You can fly, too! You should always look at the bigger picture. As a Knight, you should be ready to defend from all angles.”

Dave can’t help but feel like he’s being told something very important, but fuck him if he knows what in hell it means.

“Cool,” he decides on.

Classic Aradia.

“My book is A Comprehensive History of the Alternian Empire,” Aradia says, switching subjects effortlessly. She holds the book up to show him the binding, with dull golden lettering and what looks like hand-stitched coverwork. “Part one.”

Dave leans to look, balancing a finger on the top of the spine to keep the book still. It smells musty and old, and with something like mulled wine in there. Maybe somebody went off the shits during a history bender. “Dude,” he breathes, with a note of excitement, “this is so fucking cool. Did the carapacians write this or does it just look old because you have it? I’ve been talking with Dirk about writing one of these for Earth, or like, America at least, ‘cause I wouldn’t put _comprehensive_ on anything the li’l chess dudes wrote, it doesn’t hit on all the cool shit. This is only part one? Do you have the others?” He pauses. “It’s crazy that this is already written.”

Aradia smiles. “It’s curious, isn’t it?”

Dave opens his mouth to reply, but an ear-splitting shout breaks the dull murmuring of the party, and he whips his head around to find Karkat and Jake locked in scuffle. It doesn’t look to be serious, but they’re shouting each other’s ears off, and now, Dave’s. Can’t they chill for like twenty seconds? He’s chatting up a death goddess over here (at least, that’s how she’s been cast, according to all the goddamn temples he dug up.) 

Jane goes in with a squirt bottle, prompting a diatribe on the demeaning nature of treating tussling nerds like fighting barkbeasts, and Dave relaxes to look back at Aradia. He knows before he looks that she’s already gone.

He puts a hand out to let a little red troll-fairy dust collect on his palm, the only indication she was ever there in the first place.

Dave can’t help but wonder where she goes. 

_

Jake nearly trips over himself splashing into the creek, the fading bruises from his tussle with Dave’s beau really appreciating the air and sunlight. He bellyflops into the frigid water, giving a shout as it tingles his nethers.

“OH golly,” he yowls, ”fucksticks,” and then trails into peals of delighted laughter. It’s cold, but pleasantly cold, and a delightful change from the humid air. He hadn’t expected it to be quite so chill!

He should have taken his clothes off first. Jake only thinks of that once he’s nose-deep in a thigh-deep stream. 

Hm. 

Oh well! Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Jake rolls onto his back, and his ass bumps into a rock, keeping him from drifting down the creek any further. Good enough for him. He sits up just a little and sets to scrubbing.

There’s soap in his sylladex, but he’s not really feeling that, if he’s honest. A quick rinse is more than enough. He hasn’t gone far enough to properly roam, and he’s only a little dirty - soap would require a lot more work. And he’s not nearly pungent, so to speak!

He’d set off, he reflects, blowing his nose into the water, to explore, just get acquainted with the area. He hadn’t been that far north much yet, and he’s still got a ways to go before he gets anywhere close to the end of his experience. He _would_ be further along, but then Roxy had given him a kiss goodbye, and he’d got so distracted he forgot to leave for awhile! Dirk and Jane didn’t help any, either. His lovers sure are a handful and a half, it’s lucky they have him to keep them honest!

Jane probably keeps them honest, if _he’s_ honest, but hey, if he can’t pretend then there’s no point to being silly about it anyway.

So far, he hasn’t found anything particularly exciting since his disheveled late-morning adventure. Sure, there was a fox that bit his face, and a sweet little kitten who he’d given some chopped liver, and some neat rocks, but neat rocks don’t slake his thirst for adventure! The only thing that can truly sate him is high-stakes hijinks, and, well, you don’t find that barely an hour out from town.

It’s a shame no shamans leave around maps or whisper slim-pickings tales in his ears. There shouldn’t be much like that save tall tales - as he understands it, _he’s_ the ancient God now. How exciting. But it makes finding excitement in other ways… Impossible.

Something pulls at the back of his mind, right as someone rustles the bushes.

A young man ducks his head as he steps from the shadows. He looks every bit like a farmer, from his bare, calloused feet to his sun-light scrungy hair. Jake raises a hand in greeting.

“Ahoy, chap!” he calls over, but the farmer already had his attention on Jake. That tends to happen, Jake’s noticed. Probably the whole god thing.

“... Lord English,” he says, and Jake hisses in a breath through his teeth.

“I don't know where you all saying that got started, but it'd be nice if it stopped,” he says, almost idle. “Lord English is _not_ my name.”

The farmer bows his head, sweeping his straw hat off his head to hold it by the brim. He’s deferential, even if Jake barely understands it.

“What am I to… call you, then?” he asks, with a very familiar kind of nervousness. Jake’s heart melts, and it was already pretty sloppy as is. Now, that’s something that he understands.

“Just Jake is fine, dear chap! Come, sit, sit.” Jake splashes some water on his face, relaxes back, like he’s trying to convince a skyhorse that he isn’t a threat and can be ignored. He got really close to even one of the goatmonsters like that once, within pissing distance. And he can’t piss very far, he spits way farther than he pisses.

The farmer seems nervous, but he takes a seat on a round rock beside the creek. Jake flicks a little water at him, and his face scrunches up to protect himself, before he blinks it away to just stare at Jake like he’s just found something shocking. Like a pile of fresh innards, or… Jake can’t think of anything much scarier than just finding a random pile of fresh innards. If something isn’t eating the innards, it’s killing for fun. Or it’s a person, which is infinitely more scary.

“My name is Jacob,” says the farmer. 

“Nice name,” Jake hums, delighted. “It nearabouts sounds like mine, even! Just with an “ob” at the end.”

“With all due respect, Lo- Jake, I’m…. named after you.”

Jake gapes a moment.

“Well, blimey! Butter my ass and call me a biscuit. You’re pulling my leg!” The farmer shakes his head, and starts to respond, but Jake is too delighted. He hops up and sprays water everywhere with his movements. The air’s only a little warmer than the water. “Fucking jiminy cheese and crackers. Well, Jacob, it’s a bloody pleasure to meet you!” He sloshes through the water, jabbing a hand out to shake Jacob’s. Jake’s flat knocked off his feet, he is. Named after him. What an honor! This god thing really is crazy.

Jacob shakes it, still a little starstruck. He sets his hat aside, and it almost falls off the rock, but Jake’s got quick enough fingers to catch it. Jake and Jacob stare at each other a moment, and then Jake puts Jacob’s hat on and grins like he has a mouthful of stars.

“How do I look,” he asks, and Jacob barks a laugh like he’s afraid of the sound coming out of him.

“Just - just fine, my lord Jake.” Jacob sits up a little. “Are you - are you here to help?”

“Help?” That knocks the capstone off Jake’s building. “What’s the problem, then?” He sits down, still wearing Jacob’s hat, and urges him to go on. This is going to be… something.

“... well, Jake,” swallows Jacob, “my brother has disappeared, and I was praying, you know… that you could come help.”

Jake’s eyes go round as saucers.

“He was going to… it’s crazy. I shouldn’t bother you with this, but he’s crazy for trying, everyone knows you can’t -”

“Can’t what?” This is it. This is the hook to a great adventure, Jake knows it. He can taste it in the air, in the worry on Jacob’s brow. This is his new adventure! Suck it, Jane.

Jacob levels a long look at Jake. “... Well, you can’t go into the Lost Forest.”

__

The bar, as always, is bustling. Sharp whites of clinking glasses, sloshing grog in dirty browns, and barely concealed farts in colors she doesn’t want to describe are nearly cacophonous. The smell of the same is worse - the place has been cleaned perhaps once a millennia. 

It’s perfect. Terezi can taste opportunity, and she’s almost excited, even when she doesn’t much get pumped for things anymore.

“This place sucks,” Vriska huffs, in classic Vriska fashion. She’s always such a downer nowadays. But that’s what Terezi is here for - to show her what she can’t see. That’s what a Seer is for, after all - to Light the way and unveil the Mind. heheh. Rose would have liked that one, Terezi thinks.

She grabs Vriska’s faint white puffy sleeve and tugs it, mumbling in her ear. Vriska is taller than she, but she can still talk to the point that her sharp teeth barely touch Vriska’s pointy ears. “Come on. The bar - you’ll get what you want there, I promise.”

“You better not disappoint me again,” Vriska sniffs as she heads off. “I mean, hooooooonestly, how hard is it to find a crew?”

Tasting how Vriska sways her hips in her usual confident swagger over to the bar, Terezi can think of a couple reasons why it might have been so difficult. She gives voice to none of them. There doesn’t need to be a fight right now, after all - this is the kind of place where it’s a little too close to a fight on all sides to even start a scuffle. Terezi doesn’t look forward to picking glass out of each other’s flanks for another night.

She rocks back on her heels and sniffs the air, casual as ever. Blending in is impossible for a blind God-troll. But they can disguise the God and give Terezi just enough space and time to figure out what she needs. Working with a Thief of Light makes that way, way easier.

They don’t care much for gods here. Terezi can tell. But they care for the sea with all the reverence of a God, and there’s a lot more fear here than even in an Alternian seafront. She keeps finding that, and she doesn’t know _why_. She doesn’t much like it, though.

Eavesdropping will probably be a good way to figure it out. Especially here, where everyone’s drunk enough on sugar and ale to let things slip that they wouldn’t usually. Terezi picked this place for both their purposes.

A woman who is hopebound - a Hopeful, they call them, which she personally thinks is clever - sits in a group with two other Hopefuls. There are many of them along the shore, them and Doomsayers - doombound trolls (and non-trolls, but what respectable troll says _people?_ ) who collect there. She can't quite figure out why. They're talking about it, and she picks out the words “Aspectations” and “seabound”.

A little prying via her phone (mmmh delicious grungy-candy-streaked screen) reveals what in the hell that is. It appears that Aspectations is seafarer talk about what Aspects work best where. And, apparently, that Hopefuls and Doomsayers seem to have more luck with the sea than non-Aspect-aligned or other Aspects. She should have thought of Troogling this earlier! Even if it is probably all lies and slander made up because someone wants an explanation for the unexplained obvious. Not everyone is as good at evidence-gathering as she is, you know.

But even more comes from the conversation of the woman and her friends. It’s because Hopefuls see the opportunity of the sea, and Doomsayers know its power. At least, that’s what the woman believes, and Terezi doesn’t taste lies on her curse-fouled tongue.

What she does taste is fear. The fear that’s been cloaking the shores for ages, the licorice fear that Terezi wants to find the source of. She doesn’t know why, but for some reason, everyone worth their sea-salt is scared of the ocean. Terezi wants the culprit sweating grey fear in her claws.

She’s missed the chase.

“It’s how it goes,” says one of the woman’s friends - a little human with something salty and beige-vanilla in her hair, but the kind of vanilla that hurts to taste. “She wasn’t up for it.”

“I thought she would be,” whispers the woman, a dizzying paisley-pattern of greens and blues. Her color has a pall over it - the dulling pall of fear, as usual (Terezi is so tired of fear) and a layer of sorrow in a foul, bitter blue. “Maya could have handled it.”

“That’s what She wants you to think, that's why Aspectations are so reliable,” grumbles their male counterpart, who’s a brown-and-gold that’s caramel-tasty, but Terezi doesn’t even care - she’s listening too close to care. She. _She_. There’s a She now, who is this She and what does She want? “It’s always -”

“You can’t say that,” the human hisses. “Don’t talk ‘bout Her.”

Terezi can feel the capital letters as they wiggle their way into her ears. She leans back against the wall and pricks her ears to eavesdrop, glad to ferret out the details. More pieces for the delightfully multicolored puzzle!

The woman leans in a little, with the bright-painful dry white of rolling shoulders and drinking pure menthol. Yuck.

“I'll get Her back,” she murmurs, and then Terezi can't hear them over Vriska, because she's on the table. Shit. She definitely slacked on her moirailing duties, Vriska is not supposed to be any higher than one foot above her normal height or she gets all pissy and proud. 

“Come on, cowards!!!!!!!!” Vriska crows, and Terezi lowers her face into her hands because god fucking damn it. “I said I had good honest work, and maybe the honest part was a lie, but the good part wasn't!”

Terezi vaguely mumbles “hear, hear” just so Vriska won't stand there waiting for a response. She's a little surprised to hear the group of three do the same.

And there she goes again, shouting loud enough to derail almost all the conversations. Terezi knows how this is going to go. She’s got the charisma to bullrush almost anyone into doing at least one thing, and at least half the people here are looking for work. She’ll get her crew, Terezi can tell.

But what surprises her is that the three she’s been watching are the first volunteers.


	3. Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane doesn't see anything. Jade doesn't either. Dave goes looking.

Jane is at the kitchen table, but she knows she won’t be for long. Even though they’re trying their best to be quiet, she can hear Roxy and Dirk rummaging around in the living room. Whatever they’re doing, she knows she only has a little longer before she’ll be dragged into it, too. While she’s right in the middle of her paperwork certifying an expansion site, even.

“You know, you have enough money to stop poverty,” says Dirk, from three inches behind her head.

“Poverty is not the word for what Earth C has, Dirk,” Jane sighs, ready to gear up for the hundredth rendition of this argument. And here she was thinking they’d have a nice time! Maybe kiss a little! Gosh, not everything has to be about capitalist theory. “Even so, wealth distribution inspires competition.”

“I know eight philosophers who would disagree.”

“Only eight?” Jane asks, and she reaches back to hook an arm around Dirk’s head, locking him behind her as securely as any tie. “Here I was thinking you’d pull about a million out of your ass.”

Dirk’s little squeak as he’s pinned is nothing short of delightful, especially when Jane feels a little vindictive. Like now. Stop making her argue about capitalist theory, she’s trying to work. She gets enough of this. Now Dirk is going to pay, by being pinned here, bent awkwardly behind her, until she sees fit to release him. 

Ah, power. She does enjoy it before it corrupts.

“Guyyyyssss,” whines Roxy, and Jane doesn’t even have to look to tell she’s bent over almost horizontal around the corner, “come on! We’re gonna watch Earth C Ghost Adventures!”

“We’ll be watching what, now?” Jane turns, but doesn’t let go of Dirk, who has to shuffle around to keep from being pulled by his head. She thumbs his nose as reward for not struggling. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of this.”

“Okay, so, it’s not reaaaaaalllly Ghost Adventures, but it’s really close. Paradox Space close. I wanna watch it,” Roxy grins, and she bats her eyelashes in a way Jane just can’t fight. Why must her bestie-girlfriend be so lovable? It should be a crime. She’ll put her back in anarchist jail. “Come on. Pleassse? Please plees pleez.”

Jane watches Roxy a moment more while Dirk slowly tries to extricate himself from the headlock. She can feel the points of his gelled hair rubbing against her underarm. 

“I believe that’ll be lovely,” she declares, and Roxy whoops. Dirk braces his hands against her arm, and she just squeezes tighter as she stands up, pulling him along behind her. This is pretty funny, actually. She should so do stuff like this more often.

Jane’s nice enough to release Dirk before they get to the couch, and he’s not even all grumpy and dramatic about it like she expected. That’s fortunate. She settles in the middle of the couch, and, like magnets, her two still-present lovers stick to her sides. 

Jake would have loved this, Jane’s certain, but he’s gone on an expedition again and they’re not going to try and pull him back. But he may be interested in it later. She’ll mention it to him, maybe tease him a little. A glance to the side reveals that Roxy’s already pestering him (smart as she is, she’s probably doing it for all their sakes.) 

As the title screen glitches and scary-clip-intros itself onto the screen, Dirk tries to put Jane in a headlock.

She nips his thumb. Hoo hoo hoo, silly man thinks she’ll let him get away with that? She’s got the observation skills of the best dick around, she doesn’t need to be paying direct attention to notice when he’s trying to be sneaky. Jane’s even nice enough to kiss it better afterward.

The episode of this ridiculous show would appeal to Jane if it wasn’t so cheesy. It still does, but instead of pinging her gumshoe sensibilities in a positive way, Jane realizes that she’s been given the perfect opportunity to rip a show to pieces for its inaccuracies, and she takes to it like a shark to prey.

“They do realize they’re not proving anything,” Jane comments, idly, and Roxy snickers.

“Yeah,” she whispers, her voice bubbly even quieted like it is, “but did you hear him?? That’s hiiii-larious, baby.”

Dirk enters the fray with a deadpan, “Hey, ghosts, it’s me, chaboy.”

The three of them share a laugh, and the screen cuts to a wide-angle shot. The hosts are trying to find evidence of an old folk tale or something, but Jane’s not paying that much attention, too busy goofing off with her boyfriend and girlfriend to really pay all that much attention to an inaccurate ghost detective show. It’s not even detectives! They’re cryptozoologists at best, and they’re not even going after any cool monsters. (She did pay attention while artist’s renditions of the monster were onscreen, just black blobs shaped like various monstrous lusus naturae - one of them was a centaur, which she thought was fun.) 

“I would hack the ghosts,” Roxy wheezes, and Dirk gets that look on his face like he’s about to start a fight about hacking. “I’ma biohack them sunsa-bitches. You know it.”

“I know it,” hums Jane, taking Dirk’s hand in hers so he doesn’t start a fight about hacking.

“And that stupid thing in the background. What do they think we are, stupid? Ohhhh, so scary, black’n’blue’n’pink behind the trees.” Roxy laughs, and sits up, wiggling her fingers. “Oooooooo~ I’m a ghooooosssttt~~!”

Jane blinks, but Dirk gives voice to her confusion before she can.

“What are you talking about?” he asks, hitting pause on the remote with his toe. For one, that’s gross, for two, that’s very dextrous and a little impressive. Jane resolves to jibe him about his monkey feet later. There’s no way living alone taught him that, that’s just a Dirk thing.

Roxy cocks her head, her snickers slowly subsiding. “Uh, heh, _duh_ ,” she laughs, gesturing to the screen. “The thing in the background? To the right?”

Jane leans forward to look at the screen, but just frowns, a little. There’s a tree line, for sure, a small house in the very back with its lights on, and there’s… a smudge, maybe? “That’s just dirt on the screen,” she says, slowly. “Is that what you’re talking about?”

“The upper right-hand corner??” Roxy pushes to her feet, looking at the two of them like they’re crazy. Dirk slowly shakes his head, but Jane studies the screen some more, trying to pick out what Roxy could possibly be talking about.

“Are you seeing something there,” Dirk asks, slowly, gripping Jane’s hand tight.

Roxy takes a moment and turns her attention back to the episode, walking up to touch the screen. Jane can’t even get cross about it, despite not liking it when things are smudged. She’s invested in this now.

“... it’s not something,” she says at length, pink eyes fixed on a single spot. “It’s… like… it’s nothing.”

Jane watches Roxy as she leans back on her heels, a little confused.

“... It’s nothing,” she says again, sterner, more sure of herself. “It isn’t anything, at all.”

_

Jade’s ears prick as she takes in the strange sounds.

She’s heard a lot of beasties wandering the edges of this little farm. Rats like to eat her pumpkins. Coyotes and slugs both like eviscerating her squash crops, for some reason. Maybe they like butternut?

This one’s new. And it smells pretty big. She can’t help but wiggle a little, and she’d wag her tail cautiously if she had a tail to wag. She’s got claws and ears and teeth, but Paradox Space didn’t see fit to give her a tail! It really is some bullshit!

Jade sates herself by putting aside her trowel and phone and hopping onto her toes, eyes skating the distant tree line. Nothing jumps out at her, but she's sure that'll change if she wanders in. She can smell blood. 

This is a predator.

It doesn't smell anything like a bear, she notes, even as her phone buzzes behind her. She pays it no mind. She _has_ to track down this interloper on her turf. 

“... Jade, where are you going?”

Jade stops, looks over her shoulder. Oh yeah. She's gotten her phone out to check the time, because Calliope was coming to look at the grapevines.

“Rrrruff,” Jade barks intelligently.

Calliope circles around the shed, and Jade smells Kanaya before she sees her. Space-buddies! But at the same time, Jade is torn, glancing back to the trees.

“There's something out there,” Jade says, with the same warning whine of a guard dog. “I don't like it very much, I don't think!”

Kanaya pops her lipstick out of her sylladex, and Calliope looks owlishly around. They don't seem to see it. Of course they can't see it, it's not that close, but it's still _too close!_ Jade can't let it come onto her farm! It is an intruder and it is not welcome, damn it. Her hackles raise as she sniffs again. The scent is fading.

Kanaya rests a hand on her shoulder, and Jade finds herself relaxing. Kanaya is always so good at that. “There are cholerbears around here,” she points out. “They don't stray any closer to the farm than anything else. It's just downwind.” She always knows what to say.

Jade rocks back on her heels, offering the others a smile. “Well, alright. Besides, I'm not some dummy that's just going to run off and leave my friends to guide their own tour!”

“That's right,” murmurs Calliope, her deep-set eyes twinkling. “We can't be Greenhouse Gals without Jade.” The little UuU she'd add at the end is almost palpable. Kanaya has a chuckle. Jade leans to wrap an arm over her shoulders.

“That's right! Greenhouse Gals it is, cholerbear or no cholerbear.” Calliope gives the cutest little shriek. Jade almost puts aside the scent and the danger to the corner of her mind.

Almost.

_

It’s stupid.

It’s more than stupid.

It’s idiotic, actually. There’s no reason to be wasting his time on something so utterly - well, wasteful is just the best word, but it doesn’t flow as well. Useless. That’s good.

Dave crouches, a hand extended behind him, to skid down the dry dirt slope. He can feel the shift of pebbles and slough under his shoe-soles. Maybe he should have worn boots to this, but it did happen on rather short notice. He’ll give himself a pass this time.

Straightening, Dave breathes in the dusty air and pretends the moisture that comes with it is closer than he thinks. He’s still got a lot of clambering to do, but maybe it’ll be chiller in the old temple.

Dave takes a breath. And another.

One more, and he can’t put it off any longer.

He keeps a lot of weight off his feet - flying is not only convenient, it’s most conducive to his efforts of not disturbing the mostly-abandoned dig site. Clearly, even before he got here, archaeology was a thing. What are the implications of that? It isn’t like they were gone that long, how did they lose shit already?

It occurs to Dave that he doesn’t even know if the carapacians _started_ with the Internet. If they didn’t, he understands. But if they did, he’s really interested in knowing what all that means, like, socially. Did they have a solar flare or something? It’s not like a solar flare is impossible. He glances up, through the trees, at the cloudy sky. Solar flare in the direction of Earth C would knock everything out. He should look into that.

Archaeology isn’t his subject of choice, but he has to admit, it’s pretty close to paleontology. So he takes all the usual care as he steps down, uncaptchaloguing his camera to take pictures of the broken-down walls, ancient stone carvings, and, most notably, the finely decorated altar, a perfectly preserved slab of ivory. He doesn’t even know how they got that much ivory to stick together.

There’s some animals Earth didn’t have here. He wonders if some of them have five-foot-thick tusks.

Fuck, if they’re lusii, they definitely do. Crazy bastards.

He snaps a selfie before he gets to work out of habit. And hey, he looks good. The dust settled on his cheekbones casts a nice, earthy tone over his skin, lightening him up a little. Hides his freckles, but those are pretty hard to see anyway. Oh yeah, that sexy Strider machismo is definitely showing. He’s framing this one. Karkat’ll love it.

Jade will adore it, too. Rose will make fun of him.

John…

Dave shoves aside all thoughts of John’s weird withdrawal, focusing instead on what he came here to do. The pews were wooden and rotted away long ago, even if the sinkhole-earthquake-thing that had sunk this church hadn’t knocked everything out of whack anyway. There are some markings on the floor where they may once have been.

Dave takes pictures from a few angles, but he dislikes how the empty room swallows up the click of his camera. Like an anechoic chamber. He’d even left the shutter sound on, damn it.

The windows are empty, and whatever glass they may once have held is long gone. Dave worries briefly about glass shoes, remembers he can fly, then remembers he’s super fly and doesn’t have to worry anyway. He can spot telltale signs of Aspect-based worship, present in the fallen rafters he has to step over, the stone cornerplates, a few pieces of tattered fabric laid out. The last things the old site workers hadn’t been able to take.

Dave knew they had to leave in a hurry, but it’s weird they left so much of their stuff.

He leans over to snap a picture of those stone slabs pushed into the corners, and gets the corner of the altar in one of the shots. Now that it’s actually on his mind, Dave remembers how fucking rad that is, and he has to get a few good angles on that. No questions asked. Look at the fucking thing. Even if he wasn’t looking around for clues, he’d need a few grabs of that gorgeous stonework. If that altar was a little less concave, he would fuck on it.

It may once have been painted, perhaps in a nice cream, but Dave doesn’t need paints to know the shallow bowl on top was used to hold offerings to the Gods and to the Aspects themselves, in some cases. Wild shit. Because of the ivory, and the faint symbols of Hope in the cornerplates, he figures the offerings were probably incense, wishes thrown into the bowl, and pretty much any food but peanuts.

Dave raises the camera again, but pauses, because the lens focuses on the back wall instead - the only intact one.

How the fuck did he miss that?

The whole back wall is a fresco, preserved enough through the years that he can actually see it faintly with his own eyes. The camera’s lighting settings are just right for him to make out the details.

On top, there’s the classic images of the Gods. His best buds, you know. There’s the corner of his cape, right below where the wall has broken, and there’s Jake, big and dopey as ever. They really did his thighs favors in this one. True to life, almost. (He should be honest. Nothing can match up to Jake English’s jacked fucking thighs. Hello, handsome. Man, if he didn’t want those wrapped around his head to crush him like a watermelon sometimes, he wouldn’t be a Strider.)

But this wasn’t what had caught his interest. Beneath the gods, cowering from Jake’s hope-field that he’s so often depicted with, are… something else.

He has to step closer to see, skirting the altar so he can take in the images depicted below. Some of the same images, he realizes, as the ones he found on the JPEGed Statue of Liberty, in shape if not in exact form.

Directly beneath Jake is a dark figure that positively bristles with spines, its claws clutching at the grass beneath it, seemingly twisted in agony. Its mouth of horrendous, needle-like teeth is yawning open, and the other mouth gaping in its belly is screaming. It has a crown of horns, most broken, and its eyes are mere Xs in its face, a consequence of the style.

Flanking it are two shadowy figures, one wielding a staff that ends in a trollian skull, the other bloodied, wrapped in bright white string, just a shade darker than the Hope that Jake is surrounded by, seemingly trapped. He holds two red gears, one in each hand, that Dave recognizes as his own Aspect’s symbol. Neither appear to have a face, but they both seem to be trolls, judging by the horns.

Dave’s fingers skim over the last few shapes. A pantherlike shadow, speckled with blood in all colors, a shape in the water, a towering spire with eighteen eyes, a horse with six heads and two tails, all blending back into a menagerie of shadow and darkness. Cowering from the light of the Gods. Hidden under them.

The artwork stuns him. He can’t help but ask the obvious question, sitting like a rock in his gut.

_Why are there demons in a world they created?_


	4. Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terezi thinks about herself. Kanaya cares for her wife. Jake finds only rubble.

Terezi feeds the slim little stick into her mouth, curling her deft tongue over its shaft to massage off the delicious coating. An acrid chemical burst overflows her senses, followed quickly by the subtle encroaching of melted-sugar pink calcifying into hard candy. It’s truly delightful.

“Terezi.”

She slurps the conical applicator into which the stick is set, chasing the bliss of hard-candy sugar-pink additives. It tastes so very pink! And there’s these little splashes of vanilla brightness, compounding on each other…

“Terezi.”

She cackles to herself, licks the forbidden substance from her lips.

“Terezi, could you _stop_ eating the nail polish?”

Terezi stops licking only to grin at Rose, and she can tell from the sigh she gives the desired effect was created. There is definitely nail polish on her teeth. “Ah, but it is so very tasty!”

Calliope is trying to hide her snickers, but they ring like little bells in Terezi’s aural clots anyway. Yes, little Muse, laugh. It’s too funny not to. 

“Perhaps it is,” Rose agrees, reaching to pluck the nail polish applicator from Terezi’s greedy claws, “are you suffering from a need for supplementation in your diet? Perhaps,” Rose hums, looking at the ingredients list for a moment, “camphor? Or toluene?”

Calliope barks a laugh. Terezi just gives a thumbs-up. “All I need is a hit of that sweet sugar-candy mauve you have there, fellow Seer. And I don’t mean on my claws.”

“I just wanted to paint nails,” gasps Calliope, in a way that means her little lungs are collapsing from giggles. Now trolls are truly the apex predators, slaying the fearsome cherub with ease! Unplanned and unprecedented! Well, she did plan that, but she still definitely did it, so it counts in her book. And, of course, her book is the book of law.

Rose pats Calliope at about shoulder height, which Terezi notes from the soft click of her bracelet against exoskeleton. “There, there,” she hums, “I’ll paint occult symbols on your fearsome claws with white instead.”

“You should put purple chalk-candy dots on,” says Terezi, picking up the suggested color with her toes and holding it out. Across the room, someone groans. It’s probably Rose and Kanaya’s remaining foster grub (which Terezi cannot, at all, fathom. Who would _want_ grubs around for any reason other than teaching? Jades and humans are so strange.) “It would be delicious with that black licorice backing!”

Calliope manages to recover from her gigglefit just in time to heave a great sigh. “I don’t know,” she admits, and Terezi is sure there’s some meaningful facial expression she’s missing, so she leans over to lick up the side of Callie’s face. Points to Calliope for stoic strength of character, as she does not react in the slightest. What a lovely girl. Everyone else is just so whiny about it. “I like making my claws all different colors, but I have to say, I’d prefer them… not look dangerous?”

“Why?” Terezi prods, as she tries to prod her tongue into Callie’s aural dip, which does get a reaction. Ah. hello, Calliope’s hand. Mmm green apple. “You have the claws for a reason. There’s no need to neuter yourself.”

Calliope seems to think on this. Terezi takes the opportunity to explore the current state of her nails. Mmm, tacky, black licorice and a slightly darker green here that takes away the sour bite! Her digits fade darker at the tips, and Terezi delights in the contrast.

“I think I’m just rather tired of fighting, and worrying, and all that, all the time. This is a new world. I’d like to enjoy it like a normal person?”

“Acceptable!” Terezi crows, rocking back where she sits. “A reason like that deserves a party.”

“We’re having a party,” Rose points out, organizing the nail polish with little clear clinks of glass to glass. “Unless you intend to throw your own while I’m hosting, in which case I’d have to scold you for not abiding by the laws of party etiquette.”

“Snort polish fumes, purpleberry swirl. The laws don’t outlaw upping your game for a nice outbreak of partyception! You can still stick around to be thanked after the last song like a stuck-up seadweller.”

The pop of a container being uncorked (ooo blue raspberry) is her only answer, and Terezi settles in to listen to Calliope and Rose chat idly. She didn’t feel bad about interrupting their little personal talks. The last time she and Rose had talked, for real, about anything Terezi really cared about, Rose had helped her with some badly needed insights. She’d come here tonight hoping for the same - but mostly she’s just gotten her toeclaws painted delightfully different colors. Which she likes, even if the frustration of waiting for it to dry doesn’t suit her.

They’d been speaking about something Terezi didn’t really care about, but it refuses to leave the room, stalking the shadows like a hungry predator. They’re preoccupied. It was about the Game, she’s sure, but there’s something they’re missing.

She can help with that. 

“You know,” says Terezi, interrupting Calliope, who at least has the shameglobes to kick her for it, “you two really didn’t need to stop talking on my account. I know what you’re talking about.”

“Mhmm,” says Rose, in a badly disguised display of surprise. Oh, silly, savory plum-peach swirl. The law may be blind, but it sees all. 

“Your sights,” decrees Terezi, in an absolute shot in the dark, but she can detect the minty-fresh, deep aftertaste her Mind powers give her, so she knows she’ll probably be right. “You can talk about them. And, of course, I can help.”

Rose quiets, a moment, and then tells Terezi, in exactly what she needed to hear, “It’s good to have you back on your feet.”

Nothing’s changed lately. Nothing except seeing her moirail off for a perigees-long trip, and that’s supposed to dampen your mood. 

… isn’t it just.

Good old lavender candy really does help. Seer to Seer.

“It is,” Terezi agrees, taking the applicator from Rose so she can have a lick of their new color. “Now let me give you a grasper too.”

_

“Is everything alright?”

Rose snaps shut the breadbox in the way a guilty woman might close a diary she wasn’t supposed to be reading, and Kanaya knows her guess was dead on. Something’s up, and Mother Grub help her, she’s going to puzzle it out - and fix it.

Her perfectly manicured claws tap the countertop as she leans over it. “Rose,” she begins, low and smooth, as always, “I would like to extend my graspers in assistance, if you have some… problem you’re hiding from me.”

Guilt. Kanaya can almost taste it. It isn’t serious, if she had to guess, but there’s _something_. 

“No - Kanaya, it’s not like that. I have something on my mind, is all.”

Kanaya hooks her toe under the slight outcrop the counter makes, searching idly for a flask. Nothing hidden here. She'd look further later, but she doubts this had anything to do with substance abuse - especially as Rose looks quite sane, at the moment. Hell, even sharp, if the look she is giving Kanaya is any indication. 

“Mmh,” offers Kanaya, unconvinced, and then she moves to lean on both elbows, which means business. She always means business, of course. All ends of her are the business end. If Kanaya ends anywhere, it can cause trouble.

She’s quite proud of it, honestly.

“Something I’ve been… seeing,” Rose sighs, glancing back to the breadbox. She doesn’t open it, which is good, because if Kanaya saw that she’d put the bread in with the plastic on it again, she’s have to store that away to get fussy about later. Or, just, do it now. Kanaya has many things she’s good at, but not pointing out issues as soon as she’s aware of them is… not among her many considerable strengths.

“Around the house?” Kanaya asks, knowing full well that isn’t what she means.

The blink she gets in response proves Kanaya did the right thing there. She’s getting an explanation. “I mean, Seeing,” Rose clarifies, leaning on the counter. She has a pen in her hand, and black scrawls show on her skin under her thin white sleeves. “Something is going to change. It has been changing, for a long time, but it’s going faster now.”

That interests Kanaya. To a point. Her expertise over Space has grown a lot over the sweep they’ve been on Earth C, but it doesn’t yet match up to Rose’s innate mastery of her Aspect. It’s impressive.

Little sexy.

Mostly just cool.

“And are you going to elaborate on these strange Sights, or are you going to make me lean here and click my claws on the counter until the varnish chips?”

Rose takes a seat, and starts to roll up her sleeve. Kanaya effortlessly glides around the counter to sit next to her, and can’t help but be pleased that their barstools are getting some use from a butt rather than a heap of fabric, books, or both.

Kanaya tries to decipher Rose’s quick scrawls, but Rose begins to explain them before she can discern anything meaningful. “Something is on Earth C,” she says, with the tone that means she’s gearing up for longwindedness. “I’ve found… evidence of it, even though it seems to be out of the realm of possibility. There’s something else here.” Rose taps her finger on the writing on her wrist, just shy of her pulsepoint. Mmmh, pulsepoint. No. Pay attention. “Not carapacian, not human, not quite troll either. Something’s escaped everyone’s notice for this long. I believe it to be some kind of mutation gone wrong, or a leftover construct. Whatever it is, it wasn’t here when we arrived. I do know it’s come to being between our departure and our return to the timestream.”

Kanaya remembers, suddenly, the way Jade was caught up in something neither she nor Calliope could sense. It was likely a coincidence. 

But what if it wasn’t?

“Could it be… natural? To Earth C?”

“No,” says Rose, sliding her finger down (along where Kanaya knows is the vein of her arm) to a series of short scrawls - numbers. “It’s old, but it’s not that old. Besides, this used to be Earth, and while there may have been some surprising things on Earth, this… is not one of them.” She works her jaw. “It’s... Alien.”

Kanaya points to herself.

“Not like that.”

“Well,” Kanaya asks, taking Rose’s hand, “do you know where it is?”

“I know where it could be,” she says, blinking up at Kanaya like she doesn’t quite understand what’s being suggested. Kanaya doesn’t mind. Rose gets caught up in her own head, and, of course, everyone seems to underestimate just how much Kanaya is itching for a good adventure. She’s happy mothering, but it’s also very, very fun to get out of the hive.

Kanaya kisses Rose’s palm.

“Dirk owes me a favor. Make him watch the grubs tomorrow, and we can go.”

Rose blinks twice, and those pretty near-violet eyes (technically Kanaya would call that lavender) are just wide enough to communicate her surprise. “Go?”

Kanaya smiles.

“Let’s go find your something.”

_

Jake doesn’t know what he’s looking at. Not really.

The town’s been empty for a long time. The majority of the population is living in the Kingdoms, anyway, but some don’t like the hustle and bustle of city life - rural towns are always going to exist, Jake figures. And sometimes, they become ghost towns, like in old Westerns he used to love.

He doesn’t think the ghost towns often have actual ghosts in them.

Stepping over a strange burnt furrow in the road, Jake turns from side to side. Something white is flickering at the edges of his vision, and he’s a little worried that there’s a loose lusus naturae that’s taken up roost in this little nest of broken glass and shattered road.

“So, you don’t really know what happened?” Jake asks the floating figure of a ghostly troll, as politely as he can. 

They say something, but he can only hear whispers and howls of wind, despite feeling no wind at all. He puts it up to ghost stuff - which he isn’t the most experienced with! He should probably work on that some, huh? Get his schnozz to the grindstone on the whole ghost knowledge thing. If only he hadn’t missed the ghost show marathon Roxy had planned, but he just _had_ to follow his lead, there was no telling how much dangers that poor brother of Jacob’s could be in!

This was just… on the way. He doesn’t like it here very much. Something about it… irks him.

“Well, thanks anyway,” he says, and ignores how the ghost very clearly calls him an idiot. Yes, he gets it. Idiot. He’s the big dumb idiot. Get in line, ghostie. 

If nothing else, he knows someone who’s got lots of ghostknowledge in their noggin. He’ll mention this to him.

golgothasTerror [GT] has begun pestering ectoBiologist [EB]

GT: Hey old chap!  
GT: Have you a moment to spare for your grandfatherson to educate him on the topic of ghostly happenings? I know lots but i cant say i know quite enough to figure out what this one is saying, you know you know.  
GT: ...

Jake looks up at the ghost, and then glances to the sun in the sky (ouch! His eyes! Even glasses don’t save him from that bright stuff and the stupid words by it.)

GT: Um. Okay! I figured youd answer a little faster than this but this is just fine! Good luck with your happenings johnny boy.  
GT: Really though i feel like youd like this.  
GT: Theres a ghost here thats very nice. Kind of mad though if youll believe it! Some ghosts are just so cross about the whole dying ruckus. Cant really say i relate but you know how it is!  
GT: I dont like this place though. 

Jake looks up, tracking a flicker of white light, and sets his jaw. This isn’t right and he knows it, but he hates being… nervous. He should be able to handle anything that’s thrown at him! A god shouldn’t be such a scaredy-cat, but he can’t deny the fear clawing up the inside of his throat like a very misappropriated scratching post. 

GT: I think theres something here.

He sees it, then. Barely there in the way that means he shouldn’t _be_ able to see it, but there’s enough evidence for him to understand that this is definitely, absolutely, purely god-awful Hope magic, yesiree, and he is really not a fan.

A reptilian head, more teeth than mouth, gapes open as it turns around the corner, its wings spread idly to keep it afloat, but it moves its serpentine tail with a weightlessness as if it's moved by just the drag of a paintbrush. It has no eyes. It stares through Jake’s soul anyway, and he knows, suddenly, that it knows him.

_H͙͍͔̖̩̯ͪͧͭe̷̔̾̅l̲͚ͭ͆̐͐ͩlͫ҉̭̮o̟̖̞ͤ̏̃́ͧ̚̚, ̬͕͕̯̅͊ͣ́l͉͎͓͙̹ͪ͑ͥi̲͓̪̣͍͟ț̫̻̥t̏ḽ͑ͨ̎ͯͭe͌ ̛̀̄ͭ͛ñͣ̽͊͌o̝̙͙͊̍ͮͫͦt̨͕̖͚͓̖́̿ͫ̑̊ͣ͋hͤ͞i͎͖̫ͧ̎ͧͨ̓͛ͅnͨĝ̦̪̰̬̋̇͋͡,_ it whispers to him.

Jake turns tail and runs.


	5. Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade finds trappings of monstrosity. Jane hears things she'd rather not have.

Jade sniffs at a pile of fresh innards.

It stinks, it _reeks_ of the scent of that thing, the thing that’s been driving her crazy. It isn’t as close to the farm anymore, but she can still tell it’s there, like she can tell there’s a noise just out of hearing range. It sets her teeth on edge and pulls her hackles up so high they might as well be spines.

This doesn’t seem right. She needs to go into town, ask around to see if anyone has noticed anything strange, but she knows it’s close. It’s fresh. Nothing’s even gotten to this yet, which she finds just startling. This must have just been left here.

Or, says a tiny voice in the back of her head, nothing wants to touch food if this smell is on it. Jade dismisses it in… two heartbeats. The fact is that not everything has a good enough sense of smell to touch on that.

The blood-smell is woven into the scent of the Something like a tapestry. Like Kanaya might pull multicolored thread through a black fabric, the sheen almost hiding it, but still giving a hint of color. This is not its only recent kill (it appears to be a sawhorned buck, a native to the farmlands) and it doesn’t tidy itself after killing. It spends at least some time around towns - it smells of sugar too, pasteurized sugar in the way Jade doesn’t like. John hates this stuff even more. She’ll give him a call, after this. She has to.

All of that rules out... most things. Jade doesn’t know what this is. As she follows the imperceptible trail, Jade has to go through her mental encyclopedia of anything that could be anywhere close to this alien beast. 

Doesn’t hunt to eat, at least, not the innards. Humans don’t do that. Trolls sure don’t do that. Carapacians sometimes don’t do that. Some kinds of hawks, big cats, or wolves do that. It doesn’t really smell like any of those.

Doesn’t clean itself after killing. Most things like to be clean. Boars, maybe? Vultures? Some hawks, again? Crazy murdery people? Again, nothing near that.

Spends time around towns. Most animals do if they learn they can get food from it. Canines and bears especially. Big cats are much rarer. Deer, but deer aren’t predators. Usually. 

Jade passes by some broken brush, smelling of this thing, with a little red blood a few feet further. It’s big, clearly. Rules out hawks and any kinds of people. Maybe, just maybe, an adult troll could get that big, but she can’t imagine how big they must be to leave -

A footprint like that.

Jade stares.

It’s like if a paw was stretched out, toes elongated and twisted apart from each other. It’s only half a pawprint, barely trod upon heavily enough to leave an indentation in the soft earth, but it’s there. It’s something. And it’s the size of a fucking car tire.

Her ears pressed back to her head, Jade realizes that she needs to warn the townsfolk, because there’s a monster in the woods and it’s killing for sport.

_

Tinny, canned music plays on repeat from her phone’s speaker as Jane pages absently through the paperwork. Usually, she’d have her secretary, sweet girl that she is, make a call like this, but they’ve had so much trouble getting through to the silly-billies in charge that she was willing to throw some of her own weight around, and yet, they _still_ put her on hold. More than that, the hold music wasn’t even good, much less good quality. Jane, herself, made sure to pay for some good music. If someone’s going to be on hold, they’re already grouchy - it’s best to at least partially alleviate that irritation before some low-level worker has to deal with it.

But it’s not a low-level worker. It’s the fucking Head of Security, and the Head of god damn Security for the new joint expansion between CrockerCorp and Icarus Inc isn’t answering his phone, and Jane’s stuck waiting listening to this crummy dumb on-hold music.

She taps her nails against the wood of her desk, her posture perfect, just in case someone was thinking about coming in. There’s no cameras in her office - she asked for this specifically. It isn’t _entirely_ because Roxy like to phase in and steal kisses, but that is part of the reason.

The second part is that Jane’s tired of having her every move tracked. She got enough of that garbage growing up.

After a few more moments of this, Jane gets up to go tend to the potted plant in the corner of the room. The thing’s starting to outgrow its pot again - she and Jade both have been taking a look at it every so often after it got aphids from some crazy source, and that has the unfortunate effect of them both having the greenest thumbs known to man or woman, so the thing’s doubled in size, even without Space majjyks involved.

Calliope probably knows why. Jane makes a note of that, and makes a second mental note to message her after she finally gets off hold.

Eh, she might have some time.

gutsyGumshoe [GG] has begun pestering uranianUmbra [UU]

GG: Callie! Could I borrow you for a few moments?  
GG: I'm afraid I've got an issue, and I know you're helping out with the farming projects with Jade and all. I might have to pick your brain on what on Earth is making my office plant grow so quickly?  
GG: I hate to be ungrateful, but it's about to overtake my whole office.  
UU: oh absolUtely! what is it that yoU want to know? have yoU been fertilizing it or giving it table scraps?  
GG: I don't eat in my office. It's just unprofessional.  
UU: yoU don't have things broUght to yoUr office like big execUtives?  
GG: Should I?  
UU: it was just a joke. ^u^ do what yoU wish with yoUr office, it's yoUrs!  
UU: but in all serioUsness, it might be the minerals in the water that's helping it, or its placement, or just plain lUck! not to mention yoUr inherent majjyyks of life, uwu.

Jane looks at the fern, and then pings her secretary to ask about the mineral content of the water. That might be it.

She does some Troogling of her own, and is a little concerned by what she finds. A scandal about pollutants in water? Here? That can't be right.

She doesn't have time to investigate much further but she puts it on her docket for the future.

GG: I think I have it. Thank you.  
GG: By the way, how is that project going? Enlightening? Fun?  
UU: oh, definitely fUn! but i have to cop to a few concerns. i've seen some real sUffering that strikes me as just awfUl. u_u  
UU: did yoU know the food banks here don't have all that mUch to offer? and that we need them? i didn't know that at all Until I started working with jade! thankfUlly she's a huge help, but i can't imagine why that sort of thing is happening on earth c. apparently it's quite widespread.  
GG: I didn't.

Jane doesn't like not knowing things.

GG: I'll look into it myself. I'm glad you mentioned it, I can't imagine just letting something like that continue.  
UU: of coUrse! but i can't stay long, i have to work on something of my own. have a good day at work!  


uranianUmbra [UU] has ceased pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG]

She stares at the screen for awhile after the conversation is over.

A few more moments, and Jane tidies up her desk, picks some of the dust bunnies out of the corners of the room, paces around her desk, and then checks her pretty black watch.

It’s been five minutes.

Jane growls, and glares at the phone like she can set it alight. Of course, that isn’t really the abilities she’s got, although it sure would be useful to have in her repertoire. At most, she could… wrap it in vines really slowly or something. She’s more likely to crush it in her fist than use any real powers on it.

And even that wouldn’t work the greatest, would it?

Jane can’t believe Icarus Incorporated is being so sloppy. It’s this kind of thing that loses you shareholders (this and scandals like the one she's put aside), and Icarus Inc. only has about three shareholders. Going down to two, or, Gods forbid, one, would be dangerous. The posturing is mostly because the shareholders are happy to throw funds into a hole to try and see what’ll come out, but if you give someone nothing long enough, they’re going to figure out you have nothing for them. And then your future turns to nothing.

Thankfully, Jane had extended her kindness to a corporate partnership. The expansion project is good, it’ll be good for some of the neighboring towns.

It’s always struck Jane as odd that there aren’t many towns. Little rural spots, sure, but there’s nothing bigger than a handful of buildings other than the walled kingdoms themselves and the suburban sprawl surrounding them. It doesn’t make sense to her. But then again, she’s never watched a civilization build itself from scratch before. Perhaps this is how it works.

Perhaps not.

When the phone is picked up, Jane sighs in relief, but doesn’t let it keep her from letting the head of security know what she thinks of being kept waiting so long. “Mr. Samtan, I simply can’t justify what could keep you from reporting your findings at the extension of the build site. This is -”

“Pardon me, Ma’am,” whispers the quiet, scared voice of the Devoted Secretary, the Dersite who’d worked to track down his number, and definitely not the gruff trollian growls of Tanhit Samtan, Icarus Incorporated’s Head of Security. “I wasn’t able to… reach Mr. Samtan.”

Jane blinks, and sits back in her chair, jaw set. “And, pray tell, why would that be?”

She doesn’t expect, of all things, to be knocked right off her feet.

“Because he’s dead, Miss Crocker.”


	6. News

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave does some research. Kanaya adds to her party.

A pile of books sways left, then right, then left again, in danger of toppling. It seems to be about to, prompting a soft gasp from the carapacian that bumped it.

With a flicker of red light, Dave pops into the air beside it and catches the two books about to fall, steadying the rest of the stack with his elbow. He offers half a salute to the young Dersite, who stares up with wide, flat eyes, the whole of her pointed teeth visible with her slack-jawed expression.

“I got it,” he says, and then clicks his tongue. Dave from the present looks up from a nearby aisle, sees the situation, and disappears with the ringing of a grandfather clock to punctuate his recess so he can do the same thing. “Hurry along, now. No autographs, I’m incognito.”

He drops down nexts to her, hands her the two books, and ducks back into the aisle to return to his research. Sweet kid, that one. It’s nice to see the youth still volunteer at libraries.

Dave’s doing his research, and so far, what he’s found is troubling. Past the classic, but incredibly pervasive, werewolf myths he’d expected, there’s some new monstrosities in the myths and legends section that are giving him chills. Not good-horror-movie chills, either - the kind he’d get in the Game, when a basilisk was creeping up on him. He needs a second opinion. But first, he has to understand what he’s reading.

Dave sits back down at the shitty little wood table, scooting his notebook aside to make room for the new novel he’s brought in. This isn’t really going to be helpful, he thinks, but it was placed in Legends for some reason, and the title caught his eye.

 _The Smile of a Dead God_ , it’s called, and it’s, according to the dedication page, based on a true story. Well, anything based on a true story with this kind of a title is a hell of a trip, so he might as well smoke that dead-god bowl and set to smiling. 

Earth C has some crazy literature, even though there isn’t much of it. Apparently, libraries have a tendency to burn down a lot of the time, and so do big cities. The history books of Earth C are more common than he’d expected, but he doesn’t at all like what he’s read. Who would raze a city when there’s Gods to watch over them? Especially when, generally, they don’t like that?

(They weren’t there, his mind helpfully reminds him, and wouldn’t be for years, there was no retribution to fear.) 

(He ignores it.)

Dave paws through the pages a little longer, finding nothing of note save lots of mentions of “Her”, who he assumes to be this smiling, dead god the book’s about. Novels really shouldn’t be in the myths and legends section. Kind of misleading.

But this is… cross-referenced with another book, that he doesn’t think is on the shelves. 

He gives it another glance, just in case, and the iron-heat tang of time changing around him strikes his tongue. His eyes are drawn to a book on the shelf right by his head, just within reaching distance, and Dave reaches out to pull it off the shelf.

It’s a book on cryptozoology, but as he opens it, there’s a loose paper inside. It holds the same images as the fresco - the writhing, double-mouthed figure, the two dark shapes, the chimera-like monster, fading into even more shapes.

He’s not stupid. He knows this was put here for him. Maybe even by him, after he’s read it. It feels like something detached from the timeline, like a juju, almost. It has weight in his hands from something immaterial.

Dave pages forward, greedy for more, and settles in to learn what someone wants him to know.

_

Kanaya follows Rose, dutiful like a servant may be to their esoteric, eccentric housemaster as she goes flinging things around like a barely contained tornado. Thankfully, she’s gotten Rose out of the hive, though only at dusk (she knows it’ll appeal to her wife’s gothic sensibilities.)

Rose has been a whirlwind all day, and Roxy showing up didn’t help much either. Kanaya likes Roxy, she thinks highly of her, but she talks like stupid Rose - and that _does_ bring back bad memories. As nice as she is, it’d be nicer if she spoke just a little more carefully. 

Or didn’t slur. Literally just that.

“So it was filmed here?” Rose asks, and Roxy nods like she’s a novelty bobblehead figure, clasping both of Rose’s hands in her own.

“Yeah. Like, I didn’t know much ‘bout it, but this is deffo where it was. I think I can even get us in with the lady they talked to?”

Kanaya thinks, briefly, that she should maybe have been paying attention instead of being bitter to herself, so she could track the conversation. Hm. 

“Who talked to who?” she asks politely as she scans the area. 

Roxy bumps her with a hip. Seeing as Roxy is at maximum three-fourths of her weight, Kanaya does not budge, but she makes an “oof” noise to be polite. 

“Y’see,” says Roxy, “there’s something here. These goofballs tried t’find it here, right? And they had footage? But they couldn’t see it, ‘cause it was a _Voidy_ ghost! And ‘cause I’m a Voidy bitch, I can. So I like, got in contact and stuff, and I’m checkin’ out what it is.”

“I believe this to be the thing that’s inspired my visions,” Rose clarifies, which Kanaya appreciates. “Roxy and I just happened to be on the tail of the same thing.”

Kanaya finds that quite a coincidence.

She leans in between them, a hand on each of their fragile little backs. Neither of them eat enough. Honestly, it’s easier to get a picky wiggler to eat three solid meals than these two.

“Should we speak of this so loudly?” she verifies, eyes sliding side-to-side. “I doubt anyone here wishes us harm, as it is, at maximum, a hamlet. But we may panic the townstrolls - er, people.”

“We aren’t what has them panicked,” notes Rose, eyes suddenly away from everything. 

Kanaya is getting very tired of that.

“What does?” she and Roxy ask, almost in tandem. Her voice, however, is a tad bit more clipped.

Rose pulls her hands from Roxy’s, and, simple as that, turns to point down a side road. Roxy doesn’t waste any time tearing down that way, but Kanaya leans down to urge Rose along, so she doesn’t go following her visions and get lost in the woods. As capable as Rose may be, she is also undeniably a huge dumbass, and would definitely do that.

Twin shouts come from the other end of the street as Rose and Kanaya head down it, and Roxy reappears, dangling from the neck of a very tall, harried woman with gorgeous dark skin and pointed white barkbeast ears.

“You guysssss, look who I found!”

“Thank goodness you’re here,” Jade sighs, “I’d really like the help!”

This is going to be complicated.


	7. Done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terezi is out of second chances. Jake is out of his depth. Dave is out-of-his-mind excited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> theres a reason this story has a gore warning and this chapter is it. its in jakes part, be ready

The coast is becoming too familiar for Terezi to stomach. She’s tired of it. This isn’t where she wants to be, especially when all she can taste is sea salt and grey old socks.

But Vriska’s called her up, and after the fiasco that was seeing her off, she’s obligated to go. Even if she did, very, very much want to help her fellow Seer in tracking down a mystery. It pains her not to. It actually physically hurts. There is a secret and it is doing something and Gods (herself mostly) help her, she wants to figure it out!

And she will. But she does have her own mystery to solve - the mystery of the sea.

Seadwellers aren’t much help, they’re still very proud, as rare as they are. All she got out of the last one, Terezi reflects as she sits on the dock, was that they were starting to choke in the water near the shores. He said it was because stuff was being put in the water, but that sounded like a load of rubbish to her.

Terezi sniffs the air and gets a nice whiff of sugar-dust and blueberry topped with a delicious orange cream. Why would Vriska be wearing her godtier outfit? She sits up a little, unseeing eyes fixed on the horizon, as she hears Vriska flutter into earshot, but her panting is louder than her wingbeats.

“Terezi!” calls Vriska, so far away her voice is tinny. “Terezi, at least you aren’t turning your traitorous back on me, unlike some trolls - ”

That’s a desperate Vriska if she’s ever heard one. She gets to her feet and spits into the ocean, holding her arms out to catch Vriska before she falls out of the air.

“Where’s your fucking ship?” she asks straight off, because, uh, Vriska left in a whole ass ship.

“I don’t - I don’t knowwwwwww,” gasps Vriska, clutching to her shoulders. “My stupid crew! My useless, stupid crew almost mutinied! You’ll never believe how stupid this was!”

Terezi believes it.

“Did they take the ship? I thought you could, like, squash those whole mutiny things.”

Vriska shakes her head, stepping back, and her tiredness doesn’t get in the way of her rage. That’s familiar, if nothing else. “The ship is gone,” she declares, and Terezi knew that, but she’s still annoyed to hear it. “Dragged to the bottom of the ocean! There’s a monster out there and my crew drove me right into it!”

Terezi grabs Vriska’s wrist, tight, and yanks. “Shut up,” she growls, and then, “Calm down and -”

She doesn’t get through her sentence before Vriska shoves past it and starts babbling again, entirely unhelpfully. This testimony would _not_ be admissible in court.

“If I had a more competent crew, this would never have happened,” she half-growls, half-huffs. “We could’ve weathered the storm just fine, but nooooooooo, they just had to pitch a fit. And you know what? I’m not even sorry. Not that I have anything to be sorry for.” Vriska sniffs as she refigures her view of events, Terezi can very nearly hear things getting realigned in her head. 

“Your ship sunk because of a storm?”

“ _No_ ,” Vriska denies, but it sure does sound like it. “My ship sunk because something grabbed it! And then batted me to the winds, because I was too busy trying to get those useless idiots out of there to handle everything at once. I may be a god but I’m not _omniscient_.” Vriska rolls her shoulders and dusts herself off. “I’ll leave _that_ to cueball-headed freaks.”

So she got caught in a storm and some… monster, or other such beast, hit her hard enough to send her in the air. And she got caught in the storm winds, and. And. 

Vriska left her crew. “You left your crew?”

“Obviously! Get with the _program_ , Terezi. I couldn’t afford to waste any more time there, the storm was way too strong to bother with mutinous idiots.”

Terezi thinks, a moment, of bright-white menthol starbursts and paisley blue-green smoothie. She thinks of three mourning sailors who went with Vriska and wonders if they knew they would die, and wonders some more if that would have changed their choice.

Terezi pushes Vriska into the ocean.

The splash is cold. Terezi knows by the shrieking that starts before Vriska is even out of the water that she caught her by surprise, and she waits, arms crossed, for her to resurface. The sputtering gasps and shouts that start as Vriska breaks into air again and then wastes it shouting are familiar, familiar, familiar. Terezi smells blueberry-smoothie blush. It contrasts with the salt and rage on her tongue to become disgusting.

“What the FUCK?!” Vriska shrieks, in the way that means there’d be at least two eights in there if she was typing it, her mouth mangling the words to match her quirk. Terezi doesn’t even care.

“Fuck you,” she says, and it becomes a relief as soon as it leaves her lips.

Vriska bobs in the ocean, silent. Terezi can’t remember what she looks like when she’s caught by surprise. She doesn’t want to remember.

“Fuck you,” she says again, “for everything. Are you kidding? You just left your crew and your boat to die in a storm they didn’t want to sail into, and then you come here and bitch to me after sinking my only leads?”

“Terezi -”

“Don’t you _Terezi_ me,” Terezi snaps, and her snarl is comforting, like a mantle of soft fur, but it’d be spattered with the blood of execution, the way she used to be. “You’re a terrible moirail, and I thought maybe me being your moirail could fix that. I guess I’m stupid, too, because I tried to let you be you, and thought you’d see when I told you things couldn’t be that way that it was because they were _bad_. But I can’t just let you be you anymore, because I think you’re just a terrible person, Vriska.”

And she’s not angry, anymore. She’s not angry at Vriska (she probably should be) and more importantly, she’s not angry at herself. She’s not even disappointed, either.

She’s nothing.

“I thought we were _Scourge Sisters_ ,” gasps Vriska, starting to climb back onto the docks, and seawater drips off her waterlogged wings in fat drops. “We’re supposed to stick together! You can’t just -”

“Yeah, though, I can,” Terezi sighs, hands on her hips as she blows out a tired breath. “I changed everything to get you back, but as it turns out, you didn’t learn anything from that, either.” She fixes her sightless gaze on where Vriska stands shaking with rage before her. “I didn’t need him,” she says, “but I wanted you.”

“Terezi -”

“I wanted you so bad I forgot how much you _suck_.”

Vriska nearly throttles her, and Terezi ducks it, sidestepping with a quick jerk of her head to keep an angry god from getting her hands on her horns. That’s a recipe for disaster.

“You can’t just do this to me!” Vriska snarls, fangs bared in a blue-white mixture like half-turned yogurt. “It’s not my fault everyone else couldn’t get out of a bind! And so, what, you’re gonna break up with me because they couldn’t fucking steer a ship????????”

“No,” corrects Terezi, turning her back on her moirail, “I’m going to break up with you because you could, and you didn’t, and now an entire crew of good trolls are dead.” She pauses, and draws her cane, setting its end on the dock. It bites into the mildewed wood. “On this world, there’s an obligation to intervene. It’s what makes it better than Alternia. You let dozens die by your negligence, and for that I find you guilty.”

Vriska’s raspy breaths halt, until she raises her voice in a screech. There’s a thud as she kicks the pillar that holds up the dock, and then she shrieks again, fluttering her wings to spray water everywhere. The cold drops manage to find their way under her shirt collar. Terezi waits, grim, as the sounds lessen, until it’s just ragged, rage-fueled panting again.

Even this calms, slowly, until Vriska is staring holes in the back of her head, breathing quietly, softly, with just a little bit of a halt to it.

Neither of them speak as Terezi leaves.

_

 _l͐́̐̈́ͮ̾ͨi̷̥̹̹͚ͩ̓t͎̎ͣ̽ͦ͂ͅt̶͉̰̖̤̭̐l̸̖͔̟͆͛ͩͤ͒e̴̹̠̬̼̤̘ͥ̽ ̭̟͕̹͙̩̦̋ͣf̯͍͛̾ͤͦr͎͕ͪ͛̌̋̏ͧ̓͞i̝̦̤͈̫̟ͨͤ̓ͨ̓̏͋͠g͏̳̻̘̬h̅̈̄̉̉͋̄t̺̺͈̭͚̻̤͛ͬͫͭ̃̇ȇ̖̺̫͒̈́͋ͮ̕n̸̮͇ͨ̅ͯ̈́ͩ̒e̞͖̙͗d̞̙̯̐ͪ̏͋ͦ̇́ ̲͚͍̥͚̫ͨͯ͐ͮt̮̺̳͖̎͆̌h͖̦͚̭̲͉i͚̘̙̠͉ͅn̶̫̱̥̪̦͓̳̔̎̾̅̉͛̆g̭̼͓͉̖̽͛͂ ̵̇̆̊̃̐̏l͔̫̯ͪͯ͂̐ͥi͙͉̺̺̣̇ͦ͆̾ț̤̥͖͇͕̊t͉̞̦̍̀́ͩ̊ͬ͛l̵͖̟͇͍͚͎͉̀ͩ͊̈ͧ̈e̗͍͉̓́̕ ̠̮̣͙̒̑̀̚f̫̮͉̦̭͒ͣ̒̏ͣ̅rͩ͡i̓͐͌̂̔ͩ͒͏̖ḡ͊͊̈́͗̃̚h̩͓̝̬ͪ̏͛̇ͦ͆͟t̠̣̐ͪͥ͂ͭͅë́ͣͤ̎͟n̠͕̦͎̥̭ͅe͈͉̋d̉͋̆ͮ̓̐ ̫̹̃ͣ̊͊ͫ̓ͮ͘ť̬̜̝͓̙͚̘͗̆͗͆ḥ͍͕̤̓į͙͛͆͗ͫ̿̚ń̨̤͍̦̦̼̀̂̏ͅg̳̓,_ whispers a monster that glows so bright it almost can’t be seen, and Jake trembles with his back against birchbark. _Y̴͇͔͉̺͈̠ͅo̫̯̦̦͘u͇̼͖̖ ̥͚̝̩kn̜̞̖̩̫̰̕ͅo̥͎͠w̳ ̸̹͎͖̗y̗͢o̱͝u̻̥̙̯̣͢’̻̺͕̺̼͟ṛ͓e̶ ̩͍̣͖̖͈̮͟t̴̻̣͕̝̻ͅo̕o̖̼̠͖̰ ͚̥s͓̰͎̯̲c̫̪͕͍are͉͖̯͇̦̦d̨̯̞̟ ̰̥̗͖t͍͎͉͝ͅo̹̹̹̜ ̯̞̮̮͜r̫̯͚͚̬̥u̗̰̰̖̟n͓̙͚̟̠̩̯.̶͉̙̩̭̜̜̫ ̩͈Y̙̯̩ͅo͕͠u̟̣̝͎͔̭͕r̟̱̻͓ ͎̝̪w̡̯̗̗̮̦ẹ̞͕̭͔a̛̰̤k̠͞ l̝it̨̗͙t̹͍̖̬l͏e͟ ̞͕͔̰̪̕k̛n̝̥̱e͙̙͟e̴s̳̝̙̫ ͖w̛̪͖̺i̖̤̜̰̩l͙͙l͡ ̻̞̲͟b̪u̥̹c̺̦̹̦k̟̰̺̗̱l͓̣͈̘e̡͓̖̤̘̞͎.͏͇͉̗̯̫̗ ͎͉̤͖̹͞W͚̥̻h̶̭̺̟̰̼͇͕y̢̱̦ ͈d̹͕̥͓̳̦̪͞o͖̩̘͖̦̣n̨̜̺̼̭̯̰͖’̬͖̠̹͉̩t̥̹̼ ͕͔̮͈͍y͇̝̗ơ͔̺̟̮͇u̗̺ t͍̯̤̼͇̠ͅa̟̥̘̪̪͇k͎e̪̕ i̹t l͕̜̙i̶k̸͔̣͈͎̲̠̩ȩ̺̖̘͇̭̪ ҉̻̪a̼̫͙̗̱ ̴̳m̷̻a҉͙̗̩̜n͙̠?̲͔̞̜͘_

Jake squeezes his eyes shut, and he digs his nails into the bark so far he wedges a splinter under one of them. Ouch! He didn’t even know that could happen with a birch! (He does know that this monster is right. He’s too scared to do anything, much less run.)

The apparition floats by, and Jake holds his breath, opening a single eye to peek. He shivers as he takes in the form of the beast that has him pinned. He can’t count how many teeth it has - it seems to change, amorphous, every time he gets a gander, but he’d settle for “enough”. It lacks arms, its whole body sliding to a point only marred by the spiky, semi-feathered wings. It reminds him of a sprite, in that it doesn’t seem to have real flesh, as far as he can tell. It’s a construct of energy and light. Unlike sprites, it’s colorless, and it emanates dread.

A true-blue monster, and he can’t even fight it. He’s incorrigible, he is. What a waste.

 _C̵̩̺̩͍͔̑̇ợ͖̱ͮͬͬ̒m̔ͭ̅ȅ̗̙̟̽̆͆ͮ̚ͅ ͙͕̗̖̕ȯ̜̘̦̝̘̦̗̆̊ͣ̔͒̚͠u̺ͬ̾̋̔̂͘t̶ͩ̊̐̏̂̊ͣͅ,͖͙̻͑͗̄ ͒ͩ̍H̛̬̹͕͚̘͕̩̍̾̉ͧͭo̭͓̳͙̭̝̜̓ͦ̽ͣͪp̰͓̝͈ͫ͊ͪ͒̇ȇ̹̩̫̝̼̣̯̃ͪͨ̔͊’ͣ̅̇̌s̵̮ͪͦ̈́͊ ̫̭̳̯͕̼̜ͮͦ̍̑̚͟ē̸̺̭͖̝̟͓̂̊̿ͧr͓̟̝͉ͤ̃r͓̾͆ͨ̂ą͉͚̣̫̦̘̅͋ͦn̛̻̰̍͐̾̍̓̓d̼̬̙̱̪̥͛ͭ͌ ̇b̯̩͈̞̥ö͔̘̙̯́̍ͩ̒͆̅y̵̝̠͐ͦ̒̑͗͑̅.̳͉ ̲̘͔͖̻̇ͦͪͬ͛͑̑͝C̴̬̳͍͇͙̳̋̌ͪͪ̄͛͆a̡̤̝̝̜̲͓ͬ̄̐̾̎ͫͅn̨̗ͪͤ̇͋̈́̎’͎̩̺̰̀͑͆ͯͧ̎t̗̙̫̙͇̰̫̒ ̻͖͓̤̝͆́w̞͚̝̥̣̜ͧ́̓̓͂e̬̫͚̮̳̰̥͂́ ̓̆̔҉͈̦͍̼b̥͔̳̗̟̜̗̈́́͡ow̸̭͕̑ͮ̒͛ͩ ̌́ͪ̒͋̔̕a͊͊҉̰̺ẗ̵̤̝̘͉̹́ͦ ̴̝̤͌̉̌̃ͬ̇y̷̙̤̮͇̠̽͑ͭo̘͎͈̯̙ͫ͘u̸̖͚̮ͦ̈́̇̋̚r̶̻ͬ̽̿͋͊ ͔̮̱̥͉͒̇ͦ͝f͕̝̺͔̖̭̓̔̂́ē̘̃e̱͎̞̻ͯ̈̾̆͞ͅt̥̲̼̠̣̪̲͋̀ͣͩͥ,̹̫̒̄̄͊ ̴̲̖̣̳̹̯̓͑̈̊ͪ͊a̸̹͑̂s̻ͮ̑̄̌ͩ̚ ̧͍̌ͥ̀̉y̡̱͇̤̠͈̦̖͐ͭ͛͑̚ǫ̥̪͈̮͖̈́ͤ̃ͣͅuͨͤ̍҉͙̲̣̺̫̜̫r̫̪̥̳͕̳̟͗͗̽ͮ̿ ͗̒̉̃̎ͯͨs͓͉̥̖̰̋ͤ̍̎́ͅe̝͖̭̺̹̾r̶͕̫̎̿͒ͣͫͧ̇ͅṿ̱͍ͥ̈́̿͗ạ͔͎͖n̙̩̹̳̟͂ͬ̽̽̾̋͜t̡̒ͯͪ̀̒?̲̹̺͍̔̉̎̿̎ͧ́͟ ̙͖̳̝͆̍̄Ö͆̿̋hͤͭͫͬ̉҉̞͇̠,ͪ̏̓ͦ̉͑ͬ͏͈̼ ͇̮̙͇̟ͫ͛ͣ̋ͪͩ̑b̳͙̃̿ͤ̇ͭ͛u̦̦͊̉ͩt̡̤̦ͭ͋͋ͅ ̴̺͈̘͈͂͗̃̈́y̵̼̣͖͕̫͎͐o͕̜͉̦̝͇ͤ͂͡u̡̪̗̱͖̞̼̠ ̹̦̖͓̩̱̺̈ͩk̷͎̭̼̙͓̈́̌̓ͭn̗͑̍o̱͓̳̜̫͓ͩͨ̃ͫͭͅw̯̻͇͐̋ͨͩ̌ͦ a̭͂͛̈́̅̆̎͂s̫͍͎̲̹͖̳͒̑̔̌ ̽͐͑̎̊͒҉w̹̽ͮ̒̽͗ͣe̩̦͠l̹̀l̵̖̺̦̠ ͕͇̝̥̯̹͓ͬͭͬa̦̱s̰ͮ́ ͈̻͐͋ͥͮ̋͆̿a̴̳̙̾n̻̭̱͖ͧ̌̌̇̉̇ͤy̙͕̜̓͒̃͌̄o̲̰͔̣͗̽ͫͮ͡n̴̟̺̬̮͕͍ͯ̈́̏e̸̜̳̥ ̶ͩỳ̸ȯ̰̣̦ͩu̔ ̺̥̜̽̽dͯ͑ͫ̽̾̈̚҉ͅoͯ̅̈́҉̬̺͉n̨̳͇̭̲͇̰ͯ̋ͤ̔̉’̸̫͇͚̫͓ͅt̩̳̪̬̱͈̓͋ͦ̐̈́͆̔̕ ͙̘̙̰͗ͯ̒͜d͎͕̭̜̜̆ͥ̆ͪ̌͋es͓̈́̈́ͤ̎e̷ͤ͋̈́̀ṛ̼͍̼̻̼ͦv̴̝̹̬̫ͨ́ě̡̞̬̿̆͋̎ ̛̺̟̲̘̍̏ͥ̌t͉͇h̦̮͋͋̔̚ͅa̖̯̪̣̝̲ͥ̓̾ͧ̆t̥̝̭̠̯̠͌̾̋ͫ̄.͎ͣ_

What _is_ this? This beast that speaks, whispering the things Jake tries so hard not to think about! It’s very difficult not to dwell on this and it’s going and mucking up all his hard work!

He almost whimpers.

The creature doesn’t snap its head towards him, like in his most favored films. Nor does it turn, ever so slowly, to keep up dramatic tension. It just turns in the air, floating like a stray bit of dandelion fuzz, and drifts towards Jake without a pause. 

_T̩͖̥̳͕̥̈̾̅ͫ̃ͩͮǒ̰͇͒ͮo̖ͤ̅̍ ͙̮͉̳̬̱̜ͮ̒̓̈́ḷ̶͈̣̤̖̈̄͊͐ͯ̋a̦͓̝͒̈́ͪ̿̽ͅte͔̮̦̺̯͈̹ ̳̦̏̈́̋ͧ̽ṫ̫̠̣̖̮́ͬ͑ͮ̄̌ô͇͔̙͓̌́͗ͪͅ ̜̻̿ͥͣ̈ḧ̦́͘ẹ̬̩̤̜̮́̊̾̋l̯͔͉̔͋͆̔ͪ̉̈́͡p̄ͨ̄͊҉̟̲̻͉ ̧̪ͫͨ̃tĥ̨̥͖ḭ̢̭̠ͅs̳͙͂̓͛ͫ̋͊̎͢ ̫̝̹̭̬̟̀͑͗́̓͒ͅṭ͇̻̜͎͎̞̂̓̋̍ͫo̬̫̳͈̭̅̌̿̄͒w̜͕n̶ͣͯ͐̂̑̉.̦̜̓͗ͮͮͤ͗ ͖͔͉͕̱͔ͣ̏̔̀̄͢Y̯̭̟͑ͯͫͤ͟o̻̩̘͇̦̚͜ͅu͎̻̹͕̱̤̠̐̀̓̎̆̾'̼̊ͦ̀̈́̊͑͋͠ļ̭̭̈ͣl ̸̖̼̲̗̳̃b̸̉̇͒̅̐ͩͨe̯̔̕ ̙ͩ̒́̉͆͗̓t̞̬͙̓̇̃o̸̤͎ͩ͐ͪ̉̾̎ō̵̐̽̒ ̡͑̏̌̾̍͊l͇̤̒ͨ̌̍̋a͈̱ͥ̌ͦ̈ͦẗ͓̝̭͔̱̱̳́̂̽ḛͤͥ̏̈ ̑t̀ͪ͏̘̤͇̜o̬͙͙͚̠̲ͤ́̍̊̽͜ͅ ͔̲͎h̹̪̤̬̮ͧ̃̔̍͢e̢͔͈̠͉̳̤͋̾̈́ͮ̊̈ͅl̸͚̥̗̜͖ͫ̐ͮ̎p̴͔͆̓̏͑̈́̓̚ ̵̝͈̦̺͎̲̐̏̈̃̇ͩJ͓̥̦͍̪ͣͪ͒̾̚a͓͇͈͔ͮͨc̟̩͙̳̯̮̊ͫ͆͆o͖͕̐̽̔̔ͅb̳̯͙͖̬̻ͫ'̘̗͈͚̋̾ͨ̅ͅš͍̣̳͍̈́̒ ̭̖̠̤̍̏̂ͣͅb͈̺̜̎r͏͚̳̪o̧͙̺̗̰t̡͔̪̭͚̥̺̜ͩ̄ͧ̃h̷̩̯̫̥ͬͤ̒͌e̷͔͎̒̍r̨̥̼̮̣̲̩ͅ ̶̭ͤ̽̅͌ͪt͚̻͈̦̗̅̋̓ͥ̔ͫ̍oͦ̌o̸͓̖̲͕͔_

_Y̫͍̠͔̳̋̌ͤ͟ơ̺̄ͅu͍͙͐ͬ͝ ̰͐̎ͩ͜ͅaͩ̽ͩ̎l͎̼̙̼̹ͫͯ̽̏ͮ̚͟r͚̦̮͊ͩ̿́ͮ̊͐ḙ̞̼̗̂̄̽̇̚͜a̼̤̫̘ͯͣ̈͟ḍ̒ͤ̊͘y̘̗̞͙̠̒͑ͬ̆̓ ̸̫̘͎̺̯̖̼͑͋̉̆̄̑̐a̧̖̝̣̟̬̗ͦ͑r͓̭̥̘͎̤̂ͬ̋ͮėͯ̇҉̣͇ ̹͚͖̲͍̮ͤ̇͋l͚̗̤̍̔ő̶̖͑̂o̫͕̺͖̝͚̣͌͑̍ͥk̙̣̜̜̰̲ͤͣ̚ ̴͓͈̥͈ͥͣå̤̭̪͒͂t̸͔ͫͤ̓̎ͮ̓̂ ͚͚̃͋̽̊͒̈́y̸̼̺̫͔̣ͦ͌ͅo̷͖͓͍͇ͯ̿ͬͬu̎̆҉͍̙͔ ̢̤͚̲͓̔u͍̗̹͎̾̉̈͂̔s̵̺̱̰̤͈͕ͪ̍ͨͫ́i̟̹̩̇͌͆͛̾̚n͕̮̅̃̅g̤̜͚͚̜̞ ̜̠͈͉̞̞̥̄̃́ͧa̩͍̩̬̜̓̾̊ͩͮͩ̍ ̷̩̋͌̄ͤḍ̮̳̝̟͎̆̓e͆̈̍̊͗̔̐҉̼ͅa̺͍͖̠̳͊̊̚d̶̻̥̺̦̻̣ͦ̈́̈́̽ͫ̐̚ ̢͖̱̖͕̪̄̾m̳̘̳̘̻̼̿̿̋͒̈̑͡a͍̩͎̯̦̺̦ͩ̀̈͂̈́͋̀n̘ͣ̊ͥ̄͋̀ ̴̦̗̱̝̩̓̈́ͮ̆ḁ̧̤̬̖̗͔͓̄̔s̹̳̙͉ͤ̑͞ ̡͙͙͚͈̀̃ͧa̳͎̖̯̼̙̣n͇̭̼͓̳̜͒ͯͅ ͖͉̻̺̘ͤͬ͋ͫ͂ͪeͭͨ͌̈x̭̗͢č͚͇̲͐̿̃u͚̠̜͢s͓ͫ̅e̜̦̱̩̮̝̓̔͊̑͌̾ͣ͠ ̨̩̦̃̓̓t͈͚o̵͉͍̜͑ͅ ̬̲̲̟̲̰͍̒̿ͣͫ͂g̟̞͙͈̠̬̋͒͒̑̊̄͑ͅȩ͈̪͔̪̘̳t̵̯̱͙̺̏ͯ͗ͯͅ ̝͙͖͇ỵ̘͚͜o̼̠͋͠ủ̯͔̤̠̪͚͈̑ͯͭͭ̄͡r̡̂̂̀ͯ͋ ̀̕ͅk̉̋͏̫̺̥̬̯͈̯ĩ̓͠ĉ̴̪ͯ̉k̆͢s͈ͯ̆̅ͥͨ͋_

_H̸̗̞͔̗͍̬̫̿ͦ̍̅̊̀̑ͅo̱̭̹̎̀̆͆̈ͨͦ̋ͯw̵̷͓̬̺̏̿̈ ̦̠̘͆̂̓͒ͬ̅ͨ̑͡s̵̪̟̠͆͊͒̓ͦ͛ͮí̘͙̼̐̀ͤͣ͋̇ͧc̟̈́̓k̨͑͗́ͤ͊̚̕҉͚̮̰͍͕ ̀̏ͭ̋҉̛̻̲̥̭c̺̑̈́͆͊̐͂͝ͅͅa͚͓̱̳͛ͬ̑̏͒̎͟ͅn̲̤̪̹ͩ̔͆̃ͩ̎ ̸̨̙̱̻ͤͭ̾ÿ̴̴̻̩̯̥́ͨͥͮ̄̌ͬ͝ͅơ̡̧̹̎͛̏͊̋̊u̢͓͕̩̹͚͙ͪ́̍̐̑ ̬̜̳̥́̑͋́͊͞g̔̿͏̦̫e̵̥͔̞͕̿̋̅͒͒̃͑͘̕ţ͓̩͍̤̜̎́ͤ͡_

Jake leans back heavy against the tree, the paper-thin birch bark sliding off the wood and crumpling against his back. He watches as the whisperer creeps closer, until it’s mere inches from his face. He can really see it, now. It’s almost reptilian, its tail twisting constantly, but effortlessly, as it hangs in the air like if a cloud had weight. It sees to have some mass, it just… disregards the fact that gravity should affect it.

Even the monsters that follow him are more confident than Jake.

It seems to tease him, this beast, this - whisperer, coiling and uncoiling in front of him. It is neither sprite nor denizen - not that he got much experience with the latter. Why can’t it just get it over with already? The burns on Jake’s hands from its gnawing jaws and sizzling flesh are enough to prove he can’t do anything about it, and he can’t draw his guns in time to do anything about it. (He doesn’t want to, not really. He can’t do anything, and even if he could, who cares?)

 _Y̿́̾͊̃oͯ̈͋͌̃̊̉ͮ̉͜ư̶̛͗ ̶ͥ͛̏̚k̴̂͒̉̍ͣ͡҉n̎ͫͦ͌͟҉ǫ̸ͤw̿̊͆̾ ͥͪ̆ͣ҉̶̨w͛h̊ͭ͊͊̄̆ͧ͡a͆ͭ̑ͫ͗͝t͂͊̇͑ͭ̃͢ ̧͌̇̈ͭͤ́͢͞ẏ̛͗͆͂̾̚o͂͊̊͘͝u̧ͯ̎ͦ͜ ͂ͧ̍͢͞d͌ͮͦͭ̐ͭ̈̚͠e̴ͬͨ̋̍̀ͫş̈́̊̂ͥ̓̒̈͛́͠e̅̏̐ͬ̍̑ͤ͘ŗ̀̔̏͐̋̕͢v̢̌ͤ̈̅͊̋ͨͥe̷̶ͫ͌̓ͦ͆͐,_ it whispers to him, lipless mouth unmoving. It has no eyes, but it stares through him anyway. _a̛̲̠̬̝͎͙ͭ̂ͧͅc̟̱͛c̶̩̖̺ͩͤ͒ͬ͊̽̋e͓̞͓͇̙̤͇̎̄̏p̟̂t̨͔͋ͭͥ̄ͭ͐͂ ̞̼͈̩̬̠̲͋͂̓̽͟ĩ̴̞̯͖̞͉͎͋̅ͯ̃t̡̥̳̊_

Jake sobs.

The beast lunges forward, and Jake tries to get his hands up, but only a token effort. He _deserves_ this. He knows he does. He wants it.

His fingers bump against the beast’s throat as it strikes. He’s not sure if he’s scared or relieved.

Its teeth sink into his head, but not nearly far enough, at first. Jake manages to work up the cognition to scream, pushing at it on instinct, even as it loosens its jaw and bites down again. He can feel its teeth grinding through his skull, pure, crackling pain, he could see down its throat if his glasses weren’t askew, and it bites, coiling in the air before him, and like some horrible joke he can feel his head separate and 

.

Jake drops, slowly, to his feet, blinking confusion from his eyes. The light of Hope flickers around him, and he stumbles, falls on his ass, as it whites out.

Hm. Okay. Strange! Jake rubs his face, feels the breeze on his sweaty skin as he tries to unscramble his scrambled thoughts. He was running, he hid, and then.

He looks up at the whisperer as it hisses again, and fear fills his eyes as the words fill his mind again. 

It’s _still there_. 

It’s going to happen again. 

He tries to scramble back, but his limbs are lead, his movements too sluggish. He and the whisperer both know that it’s useless, but it doesn’t even bother telling him - or maybe it does and he can’t tell the difference anymore. It slithers towards him again, opening its maw, and Jake can’t help but scream. It gets a foot from him, half of, an inch -

A bright, multicolored hammer collides with the whisperer’s jaw, causing its whole face to contort for a moment before it rockets straight into the air from the momentum. Jake stares straight forward at the absence where the whisperer was.

Jake looks to the side as John Egbert, in a stage of perfect backswing, like in Happy Gilmore, barks a little laugh. 

“Damn, dude,” he says, good-natured in a tired way, “you really did not give me warning on that one. I almost didn’t make it here in time to save your ass.”

Jake doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he didn’t.

_

turntechGodhead [TG] has begun pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG]

TG: dude  
TG: dude you will never fucking believe this  
CG: I AM SO UNBELIEVABLY BUSY RIGHT NOW. YOU SHOULD LICK MY BOOTS UNTIL YOUR TONGUE IS BLACK TO THANK ME FOR TAKING TIME OFF TO LISTEN TO WHATEVER DRIVEL YOU’VE COOKED UP THIS TIME.  
CG: I’M SURE IT’S INANE, AND ALSO PROBABLY DUMB.  
TG: ill put my tongue up your ass if it means you pay attention to this  
CG: THAT’S DISGUSTING. YOU’RE DISGUSTING.

Dave has himself a hearty chuckle as he leans back with his feet on the table, typing on his phone with one thumb. A second Dave is pawing furiously through the various cryptozoological tomes and schlocky novels to compare notes. He might as well have rented out the library at this point.

He hasn’t, mostly because he’s not allowed to eat in here, and the librarian is too nice to tell him that the library needs to close and he’s allowed to check out the books, probably because he is the world’s chillest motherfucker and nothing at all to do with his godly status. 

CG: SERIOUSLY THOUGH, ME AND YOUR INSUFFERABLE DANCESTORGUARDIAN ARE WATCHING LIKE EIGHT GRUBS RIGHT NOW. I’M LISTENING BUT I MIGHT NOT BE VERY FAST WITH THE WHOLE TALKING AND RESPONDING THING THAT NORMAL CONVERSATIONS HAVE? LIKE, FUCK, I HAD NO IDEA WIGGLERS WERE SO DEMANDING.  
CG: I ALMOST FEEL BAD FOR MY LUSUS. ALMOST. NOT FULLY, BECAUSE FUCK DOING THAT, HONESTLY.  
TG: thats very valid of you but consider  
TG: i definitely found monsters  
CG: STRIDER, I’M GOING TO NEED THREE METRIC FUCKTONS MORE INFORMATION THAN THAT. YOU CAN’T JUST SAY YOU FOUND SOMETHING LIKE MONSTERS, WHICH, BY THE WAY, IS AN INCREDIBLY VAGUE SENTIMENT IN THE FIRST PLACE, AND NOT GO INTO DETAIL ON SUCH THINGS AS THE MONSTER’S GENERAL AREA, OR IF THEY’RE DANGEROUS, OR IF THEY TRIED TO SHOVE YOU IN THEIR SLAVERING MOUTH-HOLES, LIKE SOME CONSORTS WHO I WON’T NAME OUT OF PROPRIETY.  
TG: jesus dude you can’t hold it against the nakodiles that im so damn tasty  
CG: I CAN AND I WILL. TELL ME BOUT THE MONSTERS OR I WILL HYSTERICALLY IMPLODE.  
TG: unlikely but possible  
TG: okay so

“Gimme,” says the Dave to his right. “I know more than you and you’ll fuck it up.”

“Unlikely, but possible,” Dave quips, and they share a snicker as Dave passes over the phone.

“Go study,” says typing-Dave, and bored-Dave is more than happy to go study. This is way cooler than school. He’s too cool for school, of course, but nobody is too cool for monsters. Time parts for him as he catapults himself a few minutes in the past, his ass rocketing to a chair as if magnetically attracted - although, of course, most of the time other things are magnetically attracted to his ass. It’s some good shit, his butt. One might even say plush.

He should stop waxing poetic about his own ass, especially because he can, like, see it. He doesn’t want to get caught looking at his own ass.

Dave looks at the Dave that’s looking through the books - him three hours ago. Oh yeah. That’s a pretty good ass.

He should stop.

…. 10/10 ass.

Okay. Study time, Strider.

And so he studies.

The novel is a treasure trove. Dave devours it, like one might inhale the first meal of their life. He’d never considered himself much of a nerd, but damn was this a good-ass book. Not in writing, that was a little dry and dragged on quite a lot, but every new piece of information was a breath of fresh air.

Well, there was the general problem of how many fucking myths there were. He’s buried in them. He might have flashbacks to being nose deep in puppet ass if he could focus on anything except the myths and legends of Earth C - many of which have nothing to do with the reality.

He’s found perhaps the most information about the Smiling God.

It’s an old wives’ tale, something a sailor defends themself against before taking off. Art of it is… varied, to say the least. A classic kraken, a giant, stretched-out carapacian with a thousand limbs, but there are some things that are all the same - the wide, glassy eyes, and the many-fanged smile. He’s reminded of a goblin shark. Those teeth would be harsh as fuck on a dick. He hopes whatever is boning the Smiling God doesn’t expect oral.

Before he can get into the inevitable ironic joke fanfiction of the Smiling God and its otherworldly lover, his new OC, he gets caught up in the tale of the weird, timeless apprentice, which was cross-referenced in the novel and is even more insane. He kind of expected there to be sea serpents, but this is something entirely different.

He’s supposed to be some sorcerer’s apprentice, but he either… murdered or was murdered by his master. The stories are _remarkably_ inconsistent. Why couldn’t the scholars writing ghost stories be more clear?

Anyway, he steals time, which Dave thinks is buckwild. This ghost is like his and Vriska’s lovechild, which is, for the record, a terrible thought to have.

Would Vriska have a nice bulge?

_No thinking about Vriska’s bulge._

Maybe he’ll ask Terezi. Oh, Terezi would love this shit. He should tell her about it.

Wait, he’s already telling Karkat about it. He looks up to see himself swaying idly in his spinny chair, from side to side, tapping away on his phone. God, how does he not know how dumb he looks? Dave shakes his head at past-Dave. It's not his fault he's stupid, but it's just embarrassing.

“Gimme,” Dave demands, hand out. “I know more than you and you’ll fuck it up.”

Dave can almost see how past-Dave rolls his eyes behind his shades. There's no need for that. “Unlikely, but possible,” he quips like he thinks he’s funny. He is funny. Hilarious, even. Dave snickers, and past-Dave follows suit as he hands over the phone.

“Go study,” Dave commands as they swap seats, and his butt hits the nice leather seat in perfect time with the chime of his past self’s departure. Now, where was he?

Oh yeah.

TG: okay so  
TG: theres about eighteen bajillion different ghost stories including one of which that seems to be a fully realized thief of time  
TG: weird because obvious reasons but i guess it makes sense that the inhabitants of a planet waiting for gods would make up some weird ass demons  
CG: SLOW DOWN. THIEF OF TIME? HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW THAT MUCH SHIT?  
TG: played the same game you did my dude  
TG: plus i have deffo absorbed a weeks worth of literature in a couple hours  
CG: YOU’VE BEEN GONE FOR SEVERAL DAYS. DIRK BET YOU WERE ON A BENDER.  
TG: in a couple days then get off my dick shercock bones  
TG: cant believe dirk would declare me bender bent ive never been on a bender in my life im not even flexible enough to do a backbend  
TG: sidenote i wanna be able to do a straddle so this is a new goal I have  
CG: COULD YOU STOP RAMBLING FOR TEN SECONDS AND TELL ME ABOUT THE FUCKING MONSTERS? IT KIND OF FEELS LIKE YOU’RE JUST FUCKING AROUND, AND A THIEF OF TIME ISN’T EXACTLY A RAINBOW DRINKER. NO OFFENSE TO KANAYA, OF COURSE.  
TG: of course  
TG: yeah though im serious this dudes apparently the real deal  
TG: taking once you go black you never go back to an astronomical level  
TG: hes supposedly jet black or something  
TG: “darker than black with all manner of colors punctuating his hellish presence; a wound in the world”  
CG: NOT TO BE A DOWNER, BUT HE SOUNDS LIKE THE KIND OF FUCKED-UP TAINTGAS-STINKING HOT AIR I WOULD HAVE MADE UP AS A WIGGLER. SERIOUSLY. A WOUND IN THE WORLD?  
CG: WHY ARE YOU EVEN TELLING ME THIS SHIT? IT’S INTERESTING, I WON’T SAY IT’S NOT, BUT I DON’T GET WHY IT’S SO IMPORTANT TO YOU. SHOULD IT BE IMPORTANT TO ME, BECAUSE I’LL PUT IT IN THE FURTHER CONSIDERATION STACK FOR SURE, WHICH, BY THE WAY, IS TEETERING DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO THE OPEN FLAMES OF ME BEING TOO BUSY TO GIVE A SQUEAKBEAST’S ASS.  
TG: i guess not but  
TG: something about it just looked

Dave pauses, shakes his head. No, Karkat’s right. This is dumb. He didn’t even say it was dumb, but Dave feels it.

TG: it looks like hes just an ancient creepypasta that showed up a bajillion years ago once the carapacians got the internet working and went through some sent logs or something  
TG: shit i bet thats where a bunch of this comes from  
TG: little scraps pieced together like a puzzle done inside out  
CG: SO HE’S SOME OLD STORY SOME NOOKFONDLING FOOL LOOKING FOR ATTENTION MADE UP JUST BECAUSE?  
TG: isnt every monster

Dave turns the page, eyes the weird, twisted body of the next beast. It’s a good lead, especially considering that it appears to be one of the beasts from the fresco - the one with a gaping set of jaws where its hips should be and a crown of broken horns, its eyeless skull half caved in.

His phone buzzes in his hand.

CG: … I WOULDN’T SAY THAT.


	8. Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane goes to church. Kanaya thinks naughty thoughts. Jade sneaks out.

Jane enters through the back door.

She’s had a long few days. 

Ducking down the hall, Jane heads to the back, stepping through the room full of wireframe crates holding various animals up for adoption. She sees a cat out of the corner of her eye, and thinks, for a second, it’s GCat - but it’s just a white tom, not even with his distinctive fluffy face.

She shakes her head and steps around the corner. Focus. She can’t fall back on the same fretting that she used to when she was a little heiress who didn’t know what was coming for her. She’s a god, now, and as frightening as that is, it’s something. 

Jane steps into the prayer room and settles on the little futon they were kind enough to give her. The Life church in the Carapacian Kingdom is the largest in the world. It gets many prayers not as many as Space or Time, but plenty. She has her head by an open grate even as she paws through the little slips of paper dropped through the slats.

Jane settles easily into routine.

Each little slip of paper has on it a prayer. She knows she’s not truly magic - she can’t just snap her fingers and solve the problems - but she wants to at least read them. It seems disingenuous not to. After all, she’s there, and her friends are all mostly busy. John’s off gallivanting (at least he’s out of the house), Jake’s on an adventure, Terezi is Gods - uh, her - knows where, Dirk’s watching Rose and Kanaya’s children with Karkat while they take Roxy and vanish, Dave’s been talking nonstop about some rubbish people made up while the Gods were absent, and Jade is in the woods. Calliope is around, but she’s offered to go help someone with some… play, maybe? Jane didn’t actually get the memo on that one. Also, Vriska is an option, but Jane doesn’t know her that well and doesn’t much like what she does know.

Sometimes people don’t get along.

It doesn’t help that her Dad’s been so busy. He’s said he’d drop by later, though, which Jane is looking forward to. He often tends to the temples, when he’s not checking up on everyone under the sun or offering advice on headwear to consorts, and Jane appreciates it even if no one else understands. She does.

Jane blinks her thoughts away and settles into the thoughtless exercise that is reading the prayers of thousands.

The first one is to help a sick pet. Common, but always a little heart-wrenching. Jane works up a little blue-green energy in her fingers and hopes it’ll do something.

The thing about Life is that it’s so intertwined with death. She gets a lot of prayers like that, or like the next two, which are both asking for blessings for a dying parent.

Jane doesn’t like thinking about those very much. 

Speaking of both death and parents, Jane about dies of fright when her father sneaks up on her and puts what appears to be a snake down her shirt. (Ever since Calliope explained some things, she’s felt… rather weird about snakes.)

“Dad!” She shrieks, in a rather un-Goddess tone, as her father smiles with his usual reserved manner and takes advantage of her open mouth to pop open the ol’ can of snakes. 

He must have noticed she was down, she thinks briefly, because he’s definitely working hard to fix it.

Jane’s father is, of course, the world’s greatest Dad, and he is occasionally even worshipped for it. He isn’t quite as selfish as Jane - he tends to brush it off. Something she’s never mastered.

“Jane,” he says, and Jane can hear the barely restrained pride in his voice. He always loves it when she drops by, especially when she’s there to look over prayers and such. He tends to a lot of the temples. He doesn’t know what she thinks of that, and she doesn’t, either. 

It’ll stay that way.

“I could have crinkled some of these,” she scolds. They’re both fully aware that she would never. Someone relying on her like this - she’ll never read all of them, not with how many things Life presides over, and how many people live here (but the numbers are lower than she thought. Maybe one day, she’ll do it. Maybe Dave could help her.)

“You didn’t,” he points out, sitting next to her. He doesn’t read the prayers - he says they’re not for him - but he stays with her while she does.

Most of the prayers were of the same inclination. Preserve life, preserve health, help with a garden (seriously, that’s Space’s specialty, just because plants have life in them…) A few stand out. A wish of goodwill for three newborns, a need of good health for a hardworking nurse, and, finally, something else. Something written in short, blocky scrawl, that feels strange against her fingers, like the paper’s been oiled. She turns it over to find it’s the back half of a comic featuring brightly colored caricatures of the Gods.

This prayer is simple, short. But it sticks in her head all the same.

 _preserve the lives endeki wants to take._

Jane can taste the mystery on her lips like the soft layer of powdered sugar that comes from biting into a coated muffin. She wets them, excitedly, and glances to her father. This is a new world, and, as she’s grown up, she’s realized that he’s as much a flawed man as any of them - but there’s something childish in her that still looks up to him, and the detective nestled right next to the childlike Jane in her heart points out that she should follow any lead.

“Dad,” she asks, tucking the prayer in her breast pocket, right over her heart, “have you ever heard of Endeki?”

He turns to look at her. His brow is untroubled, but there’s some worry in his eyes.

“... I have.”  
____

Roxy leads the way. Kanaya is almost relieved - Rose and Roxy have this awful pale exhibitionist streak, whether they understand it or not, and Rose definitely understands. The almost, however, is there because Rose and Jade are, somehow, worse.

They hold hands and bump shoulders, even if Jade has a good two heads on Rose - she’s nearly as tall as Kanaya. And she’s ten times as sprightly, even if Kanaya isn’t exactly stiff-kneed. Rose is clearly fond of her. 

Jade is quite the woman. Kanaya has opinions on her. 

“So you’ve found evidence,” Rose restates, bringing Kanaya’s attention back to the conversation at hand. 

“I smelled it,” Jade nods, bouncing with barely restrained energy. She’s like if… Kanaya can’t think of any analogy that isn’t barkbeasts. It’s because of those damn ears. “I smelled it and I knew it was something, I knew, but I couldn’t track it until a few days ago. And I found it.”

“What is it?” Kanaya asks, getting right to the point, because otherwise they’d never reach it.

“A ghost,” Roxy says, while Jade replies, “A monster,” and Rose says, “An aberration.”

They pause, and Kanaya does, too.

“... It’s a ghost, tho,” says Roxy. how she manages to cut a one-syllable word in half with her lips, Kanaya will never know. It’s like how Rose can pronounce enclosure talons. Must be genetic. “Like, I saw it.”

Jade starts fiddling with her ring finger. She pinches it between her middle, index, and opposite thumb, and twists from side to side, like one would twist a ring, but only her finger moves instead. Kanaya is reminded of a troll she doesn’t want to think about, and so, she doesn’t (but he did the same thing, didn’t he, after a hunt gone wrong?)

“I smelled it,” says Jade. “Ghosts don’t have smells! Duh.” 

“But I saw it,” says Roxy, turning to walk backwards as she leads the way. Kanaya trots forward a little to catch her arm before she steps off the curb and into oncoming traffic (not that there’s much of that, considering this place is about as active as a daywalker with its brain destroyed. No one lives here.) “So, like… I know what it looks like.”

“And what _does_ it look like?” Rose asks, squeezing Jade’s hand.

“Presumably, a ghost,” Kanaya points out. No one listens to her. This is not good, because she’s starting to feel like Roxy and Jade might get in a scuffle. 

“It was, like… nothing,” she says. “Voidy. ‘Swhy I’m here, man-go. I _get_ void-y shit, that’s like my whole thing.”

“If it was nothing, I wouldn’t have been able to smell it,” snaps Jade, which Kanaya thinks is, frankly, uncalled for. Her ears go back against her skull, but she doesn’t stop walking. That is, at least, a positive. “I’m not making this up!!”

Kanaya can hear the high tones of someone on the defensive, and Roxy is great, a fantastic woman, but definitely not going to help. Shit. Well, shit, and shameglobes, and bulge, and other curse words.

She doesn’t. “You’re not,” Roxy says, holding her hands up so her fingers are to the sky, right under the FOR in THANKS FOR PLAYING, which Kanaya tries to avoid looking at. She doesn’t want to be angry today, not when there’s an almost-fight on the horizon, and she’s going to have to handle it. “Really. But it could be something else?”

… She feels bad for being excited that one of her ashen fantasies is happening before her eyes, and she’s just letting it happen, but it’s not like Kanaya disagrees here. 

Jade sets her jaw, but then, stubbornly, goes silent. Not what Kanaya expected. Rose holds her arm tight, careful, but doesn’t look worried, so Kanaya lets it slide.

“Where are we going?” Kanaya asks Roxy, brows raised politely. 

“Literally right here,” says Roxy, which isn’t the most convenient, but is still fairly convenient. Roxy hops a fence instead of using the gate. Jade pulls away to do the same. Kanaya, a civilized troll, opens the door for her matesprit instead. 

“Whose home is this?” Rose asks, and Kanaya sets to scanning over the property instead of listening. She doesn’t care who owns this place. She needs to figure out why they’re here, and also, gods above and also literally right next to her, why they would have such fucking garish curtains.

Also, it’s a woman who saw a ghost, she knows that already.

Jade knocks on the door and then steps back, giving Roxy and Rose most of the space. Rose gives her a glance, but nothing more.

Kanaya makes as if to say something, but then the door opens.  
____

“So, this ghost,” Rose asks, her hands folded nicely over her skirt, “you don’t remember seeing it?”

“Not a thing,” confirms the woman, who’s immediately set back to Annoyance category when Jade hears her pitchy voice. “And I don’t have any missing spots, either.” Everyone, currently, is in Jade’s Annoyance category. Not only does it stink of old perfumes in here, making her hackles raise, she knows she’s missing something and she knows that Roxy and Rose think she’s _lying_ \- 

No, that is not productive right now. Jade takes a deep breath to settle her nerves, and then finds this was a mistake when her eyes water. It’s so fucking pungent. 

“Missing spots,” Rose pushes. She’s taking point on this, and something about it rankles Jade. wait, she knows what the problem is, she’s just mad about it. “As in?”

“You’re talking about the Black Beauty, yes?” And Roxy and Rose perk up, even as Jade fidgets, her eyes on the crown moulding on the walls. It’s dirty in the hollows. Jade doesn’t like looking at it, but she can’t stop.

“I was under the impression it was a haunting.”

“No, Black Beauty is much more than that.” The woman pauses, fiddles with her lacy skirt. It’s stained with flour and what smells like cinnamon, buried deep under the stench of perfume. Not the kind of digging Jade enjoys doing. “I’m sure you know of him, being gods and all.”

Oops, Jade thinks bitterly.

“Nothing of that name,” says Kanaya, before Rose and Roxy can figure out some way to deflect the lack of knowledge. Jade busies herself trying not to be mad and listen, instead. “Although we may be experienced in a great variety of otherworldly phenomena, I can’t say this… Black Beauty… is familiar.”

“It’s a book,” says Rose, cutting in. “An… ancient tome.”

Roxy sniggers. “Yeah, dude. Dirk talked about it a looooot for like three months. Then he moved on to some other thing - like, iunno. It was probably about how cool his bro is.” oh right, Dirk thought Dave was cool. (Still thinks Dave is cool. They’ve talked about it, she thinks it’s hilarious.) What a nerd. “I think it’s got a horse in it?”

The woman sits back a little. “I can’t say I know where the name comes from, save his black, empty appearance. And I hear he’s beautiful.”

“It’s a he,” Rose clarifies.

“Indeed. He is a spectre. A time-stealer. He’s what happens when you turn around and forget what you’re doing - or, so they say, anyway,” hums the woman. She’s hiding her nervousness, but the smell rolls off her, a stench. She’s afraid of this Black Beauty. Jade can pinpoint it, in the sweat on her palms and the stink of her fear, which she’s hidden beneath perfume.

“Is he real?” Roxy asks, leaning forward with obvious interest.

“... Real enough,” she says at length, glancing up towards the second floor of this hellish house. “My daughter, Anna, though… she says she’s seen him. I don’t distrust her, but - well, she’s void-touched, you know.”

Roxy’s eyes almost double in size. “D’you think we could -”

“I’m already down here,” sniffs a voice, and Jade’s eyes snap to the stairs.

A young, frail human woman, white as a lily and sickly pale, leans on two crutches that clasp around her arms. She’s dressed in black, primarily, with little accents of pink and blue, and her dramatic makeup gives Rose a run for her money.

The woman sits up, putting her tea aside. “Anna, I told you I’d call for you.”

“Well, I’m here now,” she sniffs, and expertly maneuvers over. She gives off almost no scent. Jade can’t take her eyes off her. Anna collapses back onto a plush chair - the one that had been offered to Jade, in fact, but Jade had closen to stand. 

She doesn’t feel very bad about it, now, seeing how comfortable Anna seems in the chair. She looks like a good kid, but putting off so little scent is strange. She doesn’t much like it. 

“She’s seen him, too,” says Anna, nodding to her mother. “But she doesn’t remember.”

“You can’t _see_ him,” says Mrs. Sewell, leaning forward a bit. “I didn’t want to expose you to this, I’m sorry -”

 

“Mom,” sighs Anna, but she is ignored as her mother continues. And yet, every guest is focused on her - Roxy especially. 

“He isn’t visible. He’s a time-stealer, not something of our plane.” She shakes her head. “You lose moments, when he’s near. He steals them to add to his life, like some kind of -”

“Thief of Time,” Rose and Kanaya say, at once. Anna looks angry.

Jade can relate.

Sitting forward, the frail, pale slight of a girl slams one of her crutches on the floor, loud enough to silence everyone - and, apparently, to ruin the supports, bending them beyond repair. “Can you guys _shut up_ ,” she gasps, like it’s taken a lot out of her. She leans heavy on her crutch. When she lifts it, it miraculously unbends, springing back into place with a quiet click.

“Anna,” murmurs her mother, but Mrs. Sewell doesn’t argue further.

“I’ve seen him,” Anna says, suddenly, “and I don’t think that he’s that. I’ve seen it, but I can’t - remember it. Not like I know I should. But I know it’s missing.”

It’s clear by now that Rose, Roxy, and Kanaya _are_ following something. Something real. But so is Jade, and she isn’t about to let something dangerous wander because something else is happening. She steps back, slowly, and then all at once, letting Roxy and Rose focus on Anna’s words. Kanaya turns, just a little, to catch her eye, but Jade just shakes her head. She had to do this.

Kanaya lets her.

Jade, ears pushed forward, leaves through the back door.


	9. Born

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave goes home. Terezi goes to someone else's home.

Dave kicks the door shut behind him. He’s never needed a shower more in his life, and that includes the digs he’s been on, so that’s a hell of a statement. Thankfully, he’s in his super-clean house, courtesy of one Karkat Vantas, with no weird clutter to freak out about. Jade is here too, but she keeps her shit to her own room. 

Dave sighs in relief as he steps inside.

He steps, immediately, on something that inspires a truly grotesque amount of pain, and only doesn’t drop instantly due to the fact that he can fly.

“Fuuuuuuuuccckkk,” he whines, not even bothering with voicing a long, elaborate metaphor, because he’s just going to want to say more swear words anyway. “Fucking shitdick on a bike. What in hell?”

This is what he gets for taking his shoes off at the door, he thinks, lifting both feet off the ground to examine the culprit. This is what he gets for negotiating a deal with Karkat where he doesn’t have to vacuum every other day if he doesn’t wear his “NASTY-ASS SHOES” inside. It’s his punishment for giving in. Any Strider man should keep a pair of neon slippers by the door anyway, what the fuck was he thinking?

Is that a fucking Lego.

Dave stares down at the bright red Lego, innocuously perched on its side. There’s nothing else, he notes as he scans the floor. He couldn’t have stepped on anything unless it was still stuck to his foot (he checks, nope, nothing) so this is it.

Is this what all those memes were about? Goddamn. He guesses it really does hurt, he’d never had Legos as a kid. Sidenote, Earth C has Legos. Maybe they’re just a really convenient design?

“Dave,” sighs a relieved voice, and Dave looks up to see the troll it belongs to. Hey, his boyfriend. (Haha, gay.) “Please tell me you’re here to relieve me of the pants-shitting bullfffudgery that is my life. I’ll take it at this point. My weak spots are my throat and wrists, you don’t need an extensive biology lesson for this. Do it or I’m taking your shitty broken sword in my filthy claws and committing sudoku.”

Dave struggles to keep a straight face, he’d honestly forgotten he taught Karkat sudoku and seppuku backwards, but he’s in way too deep to own up to it now. “Yeah, after I cut off my own foot to relieve myself of the endless pain. Bluebottles ain’t got shit on an upturned Lego brick, my man. Sidenote: why are there Lego bricks in our house?”

The answer bounces through the door at high speeds. 

“Knight Strider! Knight Strider!” shrieks a troll the size of his shin at most, but with a shocking amount of upward velocity. He’s actually knocked back by the impact of a child to his hanging legs, and he sways like a buffoon for a second. Yikes! Deep impact! “It’s really you! Knight Vantas told me you lived together but I didn’t believe him!”

The kid sniffs his comfy sweatpants that pass for godtier clothes, and wrinkles their tiny little nose at him. “And you smell bad, too.”

Many things go through Dave’s head at one. _Oh god, they reproduce asexually, Karkat was fucking with me before and the matriorb thing was a joke._ And then, _We’re being invaded, this is actually what adult trolls look like, they’re here to steal my fingers._ And then, finally, _There is a child in my house._

“There is a child in my house?” Dave voices, wisely going with the third option. “I didn’t know the house came with kids, it is remarkably non-childproofed. Where have they been, scurrying around the vents eating drywall? Would explain this one’s stunted-ass growth.” 

The kid just grins up at him, and Dave realizes that was a mean thing to say. “Shit. fuck. I mean - wait. Fudge, uh, sicles. You don’t know those words. Don’t tell your parents.”

“She doesn’t have parents,” says Karkat, saving Dave of trying to figure out if this was a girl or guy troll - or maybe neither, that’s okay too, no judgements. Trolls are hard enough to discern gender from as it is. Helps a lot that it’s fake. “She’s one of the ectobiological creations. Like you and me, uh, but without a guardian to go with.”

Dave reaches down and tries to nudge this child off his legs. You know, being a god doesn’t really make that much difference in how most kids treat you. Just one more reason Dave never wants to involve himself with children. God, he _was_ a child once. That’s insane. He was like, a little baby. Kissing Karkat is basically making him a pedophile, he was so angelic and tiny. Sike, people grow up, idiot. 

“So… why is she here?” Dave asks, as the sprightly little shit grabs onto his arm next and climbs him like a jungle gym. He feels like the mom in Gremlins, which is bad because one, it requires him to be a mom, and two, he would have to be in the movie Gremlins. 

“Kanaya usually runs that shit. Her kids got adopted out, like they usually so when she fosters them because she’s like the best lusus-surrogate, and then afterward she had a few more squirts to take on. But Rose took her and ran off into the woods like a couple looking for a place to fill a filial pail before the drones get there, and I owed her, like, a lot. So now…”

“We’re parents,” says Dirk, appearing out of fucking nowhere with a baby in his arms. “It’s getting absolutely patricial up in here. Got so many dads these babies don’t know what to do with it. Gonna grow up stuffed full of mangrit.”

Dave has to take a second to absorb the image in front of him. Karkat was a sight and a half, slumped, with somehow even messier hair than usual, but he at least had about the same look as always. Drab clothes. Casual slouch. Shirt tucked in. you know, the regular. Dave could handle that. What he couldn’t handle was his brother apparating like Dumbledore, and looking like Dumbledore dressed in his teenage years, if his teenage years were the 80s but he still looked old. Seriously, that paisley yellow is not his best look, and especially when it stops mid-thigh. Next thing you know he’s going to be ogling his brodad’s legs.

…

Hm…

No. Dave shakes himself out of it. “You are also here,” he states wisely.

“Yeah, absolutely.” Dirk sniffs. “I owed Kanaya also. Lost a bet, like, three weeks ago. Totally forgot about it, but now I have to take care of children.”

Dave feels a quiet little spike of irrational fear. 

“Y’know,” he says, “that sucks, I wanted to talk to her about it. What about your girlfriend?”

“Which one?”

“The one that keeps your balls in her purse.”

“They share, one each.”

“Jane.”

“Oh, shit. She’s doing her fucking… corporate bullshit.” Dirk’s mouth tightens like he hates thinking about it. Which, of course, he does. “I don’t know, I didn’t ask. She’s kind of caught up in stuff, lately. Won’t open her mouth about it. I thought the Crockenglishes were supposed to me _more_ emotionally vulnerable, but fuck me, I guess.”

“Can you two stop spouting nonsense, garbage, and swear words in front of the grubs we have to watch? Kanaya will literally tear out our eyes if we teach her fosters the word “fuck”.”

“Fuck,” giggles the child.

Karkat throws his hands in the air.   
_

The acrid scent lingers on Terezi’s tongue as she takes a breath. It’s a terrible feeling, like the taste of flowers (not the smell) and rubbing alcohol. She feels like she’s breathing stale cotton candy with vinegar mixed in.

Just how human perfume works.

She thinks about holding her breath, but, instead, just stops at the first room. She can hear the quiet chatter of the women who invited her here, as well as a few unfamiliar tones. What is that, a cream scent? She likes cream, but it’s hard to appreciate the taste when she’s about to have an aneurysm from artificial bullshit smells. Perfume doesn’t even smell good, why is there so much of it in here?

“Terezi?” asks Roxy from inside, her scent muffled by the terrible, overstimulating perfume-atmosphere, but Terezi’s sure it’s a refreshing cookie-and-gingersnap with the classic fresh-milk white that she always has. (And just a touch of candyfloss.) 

“Outside,” she responds, before ducking out the door. “We do this outside.”

It takes them all an irritating amount of time to join her outside. Terezi takes the respite to give the house a quick investigation. (Mmh. Cream again. Cream’s a delicious choice, both a color and a taste! Not as vibrant as her favorites, but it’s delightful anyway. Much better than beige.)

She starts snapping at the door when it creaks open.

“Come on now! You’re wasting my time, all of you. Yes, even you, Choking Bleach-Chemical Wash. Hello, my dear Peach-Plum Swirl, and of course the sweetest, full-bodied sour apple I’ve ever tasted, I missed you!” She grins, and hears a little gasp from someone she hasn’t identified yet. Yes, stand in fear of the Law! The Dragon! Other things she gets called also! Man, her names are just the best. “And you…”

Terezi is already to her, sniffing about, and then giving her a nice, wet lick from her neck to - is that an eye? Oops, eye tongue. “Sheet metal and electric blue, with quite a deep black licorice tang,” she decrees. 

Sheet Metal takes a breath, and says, “Aren’t you here to do something?” What a smooth voice, even shaky with nerves around three Gods. It bothers Terezi how close she has to get to smell her. And she sounds accusatory, too. Impossible. That’s Terezi’s job, she’s not about to allow it to be taken from her. 

Terezi licks her teeth and leans on her cane, whistling a breath in through her teeth. It’s a high-pitched sound. She can tell the old perfume-woman winces. Good, Terezi would like to put her into smell jail for having such just… terrible taste. In every sense of the word.

“Let's start from the beginning,” Terezi suggests, because she's the only one with some sense around here. “You called me here to help you with… what? Why did I fly halfway to the largest forest on the planet? Why did I snack on seabirds and abandon my own investigations? Why am I about to steal your supple young nannylusus on my way back?”

“You… did not mention that last part,” says Kanaya, diplomatically. Did she forget to mention she was going to take Karkat with her on the way back? Oops.

“I assure you it was a mistake,” she smiles.

“Nevertheless,” Rose butts in, “we need you to help us. Anna has some sort of mental block, and as a Seer of Mind, we thought you may… what’s the word…”

“See it,” Kanaya suggests. 

“I was trying to say pinpoint the obfuscation and find its source,” Rose mutters, with some bitter-tinged bitterness, “but See works just fine, yes.”

Terezi goes for electric blue and black licorice again, and finds that her actual skin is the normal peaches-and-lily-over-delicious-candy-red as most lighter humans. Mmm so tasty. Even the hint of candy is enough of a temptation to drive her crazy. 

“We’ll see what I can do,” Terezi cackles, and she presses her forehead to Anna’s and calls upon the minty-deep powers of Mind.

And

It’s

“I will need Royal Pinkberry to lend me her grasper,” Terezi decrees, pulling back from Sheet Metal’s shock-frozen form. She hears her stumble, but she doesn’t hit the ground, so it doesn’t strike Terezi as her problem.

“I keep telling you, hot-wings, I’m not doin’ that royal shit,” Roxy protests. 

Ah, but she killed the Condesce - that means she’s got as much right to the throne as any. Plus, she’s a hot-pink bubblegum bitch (a term Roxy is fond of and Terezi has gone absolutely gaga for) and is as close to an Heiress as anyone except Jane. as far as Terezi is concerned, Roxy and Jane are co-leaders now. Especially because they let her make her own laws. That’s her favorite part.

“Don’t care,” says Terezi, who gets her ass down to business. No more sniffing and useless snooping around. They’re wasting time, and Terezi is dying to both get back to her own work and see the resolution of theirs. “We’re going to do a fraymotif.”

“Um,” says Kanaya.

“Don’t worry, Kiwi-Cucumber-Dangerplant. I promise you it’s perfectly safe!”

She can’t _see_ Rose, per se, but she can sense the doubt from the other Seer. Oh well. A little doubt never changed Terezi’s mind!

“Roxy. I want you to work with me. I’m going to show you what you have to steal, and then I want you to steal it.”

Roxy flexes her hands, but takes Terezi’s resolutely. She doesn’t back down from a challenge. She would make a good troll. 

Terezi closes her blinded eyes and sets forth on making the way clear. She delves back into Sheet-Metal’s mind and points the way, flickers of pink-black-green in a synesthetic explosion of smell and flavor backlighting her awareness. Someone might be talking, but Terezi isn’t listening.

She isn’t clinical, nor is she professional. But she’s quick. Terezi doesn’t want to linger in the mindscape of another person any longer than she has to, especially as they’re not acquainted and this isn’t her specialty. She should be Seeing, not interfering. But that’s what she has Roxy for.

The void shrouding Anna’s mind lingers in the back, behind old, forgotten memories and metaphorical dust bunnies. Terezi can’t poke around through those memories - at least, not yet - but she can tell when something is interfering, and there’s void clouding Sheet-Metal-Electric-Blue-Lily-Yogurt’s memories. She doesn’t know why. But she knows it’s there.

Terexi can feel Roxy rushing through, imprecise, endangering the mind, and Terezi ropes her back in. a flash of the deep-toned mint she’s so accustomed to, and Roxy is back on the right track, taking it slower, too. She follows the path Terezi walks her through, and finds the void. 

Terezi prods her, and Roxy repossesses what is hers.

The fraymotif ends with a last flash of light. The whole process took mere moments, but everyone stands, watching with bated breath to see what Terezi’s next scheme is. Of course they would. Her schemes are legendary. 

And then Anna yells.

“I knew it! I knew it! He’s no Thief of Time, he’s Void-born! He’s Void-born like me!”

Terezi smiles.

“I remember!”


	10. Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake camps out. Jane plays cards. Jade goes hunting.

Making camp with two people is much, much easier than with one. Jake really appreciates the ease.

He pulls out a can of beans (canned food is amazing) and sets up a fire. John’s Breath powers are pretty great too, because he can blow just the right amount on the fire to get it going! What a helpful trick. He’s great at parties, too.

He just has to ruin it, though.

“So what was that thing?” John asks, popping a handful of blueberries into his mouth. Blueberries, sandwiches, and beans. Best meal. “The one that almost got you.”

Jake isn’t really sure why he thinks he’d have magicked up an answer after a few kilometers’ worth of walking, but he isn’t about to club him over it. Just pout, probably.

Dickhead.

“Uh,” he says, before forcing another smile, “who knows? Just another mystery on the road to adventure!”

“Yeah, you looked pretty fucked up about it,” says John, getting straight to the point. Damn it! Why can’t he be like Dirk and accept him at his word! (Well, Jake guesses John shares more with Jane than Dirk, but they’re kind of the same. They seem to ignore most of their own stuff just fine, but John is breaking the mold and going after his! Stupid stupid dumb dumb!) “Did you know what it was?”

“No,” he squeaks, much quieter than he intended. Jake doesn’t want to think about that cavernous maw. He clears his throat, and says, again, “No,” but deeper this time. Like a real man. “No, I don’t know what it was save a real blighter. Puts a dampener on your mood, getting chased around yakety-saxety style by an airborne scourge.” 

The fire flickers, dims; John doesn’t even look at it as the wind picks up to bellows some life back into it. Jake doesn’t look at him, either. He just stuffs his face full of beans and hopes for the best.

The best is yet to come, because John’s a nosy little narc.

“I’m glad you’re okay, though,” he says, and Jake blurts, “I don’t rightly want to talk about this.”

They both stop, for a moment. There’s no sound except a far-off owl, perfectly, cinematically timed, and the crackling fire. Even the wind is still.

“Oh,” says John. and then, “Okay. Cool.”

“I’m not buggering you about what you’ve been doing in your little hideaway, you don’t have to nag me about this,” Jake breathes, all in one exhalation. It’s not nice. It’s rude, even. But he doesn’t want to talk about it.

John frowns. Jake isn’t even looking at him and he can tell. Well - he should frown! He’s prodding Jake like a cow to slaughter, and Jake rather likes having his blood, thanks.

_so much blood_

“... Asshole,” says John, leaves crunching under his nosy ass as he sits back. “Is that how we’re doing it now? I’ve been - I haven’t been hiding.”

“No one’s heard from you in a week,” Jake sniffs. “You’re hiding. I tried to ping you and everything!”

 

“Oh, come on. It hasn’t been a week. And I still use snapchat sometimes -”

“A picture of your ceiling isn’t a sodding response -”

“Fuck off,” John huffs. “I don’t - I’ve just been at home, you could come over anytime.”

Jake looks over, finally, because at least they aren’t talking about him anymore. Now John’s on the defensive. 

“You don’t want me there.” He rubs under one eye. “Not that I’m getting many invitations, mind, but you especially, you just - you just want to stew in your whining and be sad! And how is that an inviting atmosphere, for as I see it, it’s mostly just annoying!”

John throws a can of beans at him.

Jake whines as it bounces off his head, like he’s Otis, from Milo and Otis, after he’s slipped and fallen. It didn’t even hurt that much, but it hurt _something_ in his head. Or maybe his heart.

Now he’s thinking about Dirk again. Dirk and Jane and Roxy all having a good time without him, like always.

“Woah,” says John, but Jake’s not listening, “dude, are you - are you okay? Are you good?”

“I’m bloody fine,” Jake gasps through tears he didn’t realize were there, “could you fucking sod off and stop it with all this hootenanny?”

He puts his face in his hands and his hands in his knees, and there’s as good a place to be as any, is between his knees. Nobody can talk to him here. Nothing can have his face if he’s not showing it, and John’s not seeing him cry, and nobody knows he’s being a mewling little quim of a boy if he isn’t showing it, and he’s so, so fucking sad.

Jake sobs.

He sobs and he cries and he tires himself out, and John is still there when he’s done.

“You good,” he asks, uncomfortably, and when Jake just shakes his head, John moves past it. He doesn’t push, and he smiles and talks about his hammer and how he’s playing chess with someone who lives in the woods, and Jake feels like maybe it’s okay.  
___

“The Devil.”

Jane muses casually over a tarot deck, shaking her head. “It’s so strange that this showed up again.”

Her father just hums and goes through the next pack of cards, peeling off the thin sheen of plastic and dropping it into the little cardboard box they’re using as a bin. Jane watches it uncrinkle itself.

“Anything of note in this one?” she asks, as her dad flicks through the 25 boondollar (?) deck of cards.

“Not that I can see,” he answers, spreading them out over the table.

The whole living room is covered in tarot cards. They’re flung to even the farthest reaches of carpet, all face-up, in what could be called the most hellish spread ever seen. If someone tried to interpret this, Jane is sure that their head would burst into flames.

Of course, tarot isn’t real. It’s just a bunch of old cards that have about as much influence on the world as a regular old deck of playing cards, but the jack of spades or whatever isn’t about to tell her that she’s going to die in a tragic harp accident. Tarot tries to. And that is the ticket, the golden ticket Jane is waving in Wily Old Willy’s smug face. Cavity-having jerk.

Tarot isn’t real, but the people who make the cards think that it is. And so, when they’re making them, they’ll put superstitions on them - in her world, the Devil was just that. The devil. 

In this one, it’s Bec Noir.

At least, _sometimes_ it’s Bec Noir. in others, it’s a wildly inaccurate representation of Lord English himself. In some, it’s… okay, this is a corgi-themed set, but she’s pretty sure that’s supposed to be Bec Noir still.

It’s odd that Bec Noir is drawn so accurately, even if he’s much more muscular than Jane remembers. She supposes it makes him look more intimidating. Lord English, by comparison, varies wildly, from a skeleton with see-through muscles to a giant hellish beast with a lot of spikes and tentacles. She’s not sure where all that came from, but none of it actually hits the mark.

But sometimes it _isn’t_ Bec Noir, or Lord English, or one of many other figures from the game, in rarer occasions. A lot of the time, the Devil takes the form of something Jane has never seen.

The second deck, ironically, has what’s so far the best iteration. It’s a long-limbed, spiked beast, alabaster white with tints of cream. A crown of broken horns encircles its uneven head, and its eyes are crossed out, even if they are drawn under it - she got a glimpse of even cream planes, cloudy with blindness. 

Its body twists, in the middle, and a second mouth gapes open in its belly. Past its teeth are only darkness. (“Endeki,” her father had said, tapping on the card. “This is who Endeki is. I can’t say I know much about him, but I know what he looks like.

“How?” Jane had asked, at the time.

“No one doesn’t.”)

Jane is enticed by it all.

The various shapes and forms on that particular deck were all rather esoteric. There’s a card bearing a broke-necked troll made of shadows and wielding twin gears, which she finds perhaps too eccentric for her tastes. Some kind of grim mix between a bear and a boar, white tinged with blue, adorns a nearby card. Jane picks up her personal favorite - The Tower, sporting an image that almost looks like Betty Crocker herself, pulling a ship down into a stormy sea. 

Jane’s done her own research. She thinks it’s mostly a load of poppycock, of course. This Endeki is likely being used for insurance fraud ina Scooby Doo-esque plot, but this time, the plot has actual consequences, and there’s blood on its hands. Jane’s a detective. It’s her job to find the perpetrator.

And she will.  
___

She’s got it. By her own blasted magic, she’s got it. And she’s going to bring it back.

Jade sniffs around the base of a tree, ears perked for any hint of sound. Nothing’s making noise here. She supposes it’s because a large predator is in the area, and for once, it isn’t her. 

She has no tail to wag, still, but she has a good nose, sharp eyes, and enough determination to fuel her heart even in the darkest hours. Jade is hunting. She’s not a hunting dog, technically, but it’s not like Becquerel couldn’t track with the best of them.

She shimmers and reappears behind another tree. Yes - this is where it went. It’s scent-marked this tree. She used to be a little annoyed about smelling piss, but she’s become accustomed to it. Her animal hindbrain says it’s what’s right anyways, and she isn’t going to argue with the last remnants of Becquerel she has, especially when it’s so helpful.

No one else knows about this. She tried to tell Rose and Kanaya and Roxy, but they wouldn’t listen. It’s up to her.

She’s kind of tired of having to shoulder the responsibility. She almost thinks about the yellow yard -

No.

She’s past that now.

Jade gives herself a hard shake and circles the tree, eyes sharp, ears pricked. Where did it go next? It’s acting like a big mammal, for sure. Not quite like a wolf - she’d recognize that much easier. Not quite bear either. She knows she’s missing something - something obvious - but she can’t afford to waste time with it.

The sun shines through the trees, stretching shadows long and dappling leaf-patterns over the forest floor. It makes it hard to pick out footprints, but Jade isn’t about to give up. The scent is windblown and fading, but she’s got more than her nose. More than what Bec gave her.

Jade steps out, and she can feel it, now - how space is laid out in this forest, big and small and never-ending. She can calculate every distance, her awareness laid like a blanket over everything she can see. 

(It’s just like she practiced, and practiced, and practiced.)

There. A divot in the ground, millimeters deep, perhaps, but it’s out of place. 

(She had to do something with her time on the ship.)

(So she trained.)

Jade turns, searches the floor, and finds half a footprint hidden by a leaf. This footprint is newer than the others, but no less large. She has to find what’s making it. She has to protect them. She’s a God, and even putting that aside, she’s _Jade_. She isn’t going to let someone be hurt when she can fix it, even if they are big, stupid ninnyheads that won’t listen to her.

Silent, she follows the trail. It’s slow going, but it doesn’t appear that the beast was doing anything but taking its time, either. It meanders, slips through trees and hops bushes, moving through the trees like it’s nothing. Something of this size should have a lot more trouble, she thinks to herself. (Something of this size shouldn’t be leaving precious nutrients uneaten, shouldn’t have gone unnoticed so long, she thinks again, but Jade quells her nervousness. She doesn’t need to give off that kind of smell in something else’s territory.)

Jade pauses by a tree, eyes fixed on its bark - or its lack of.

Something’s used it as a claw-sharpener, like a cat with a scratching post. The tree is split nearly to its core, only standing up by a few stubborn splinters, claws dug in over and over again. How long are its claws, to dig in that deep? (At least one and a quarter feet, judging by the deepest cut, accounting for its angle. It’s a chilling thought.)

Jade reaches out, touches the savaged tree. A splinter tries to wiggle into the pad of her finger, but she withdraws her hand the same way it came. The scent is almost overpowering here, and her nose isn’t nearly as good as a normal dog’s, either. This is… something.

Her phone buzzes. She ignores it.

Jade picks up speed. It gets more obvious, from here - some trees have been clawed all the way through, so they wither and die, some have been knocked over and claws into stumps. Some small amounts of fur the color of bleached bone, with some tinge of a color Jade can’t identify, is caught on splinters where the beast has rubbed itself.

Jade breaks into a run.

She’s figured it out. This is it. Like a cat with a scratching post, killing for sport - this is a lion, a puma, at its core Jade knows what she’s hunting. 

_This is a cat._

Jade teleports, cutting space wherever she can, green flashes as she finds her way to its den. She’s too excited, mind blanked by the idea of _chase_ and _cat_ and _run_. This is how it’s supposed to be. She’s going to chase this cat out of her turf, and make sure it never comes back!

Or else!!!!

Jade’s last shortcut brings her to a clearing. She comes to a stop, suddenly, like she’d reached the edge of a cliff. In a way, she has, but she’s at the bottom of it - a shelf of rock thirty-one-point-four feet high stretches into the air in front of her. A cave opening yawns open at its base. Her eyes rove over the area, but she sees nothing. Nothing lies in wait for her. The cat has its guard down. 

She takes a step into the tall, padded-down grass of the clearing, sniffs around. The smell is thick in the air here. This is clearly where it lives, and a fresh trail leads into the cave set into the cliff face. Jade pants with exertion, with excitement - she’s so set on this, she’s almost missed something important.

She pushes her tongue back into her mouth, eyes set on the edges of the cliff. She smells blood. Dry, old blood, but blood all the same, and a lot of it. Does it pull its kills back here? Why would the blood last that long?

Jade sees tinges of red at the edges of the cave. It must have gotten some on the walls, dragging its kills back here. The cat looks to be very protective of its quarry. She can’t imagine how efficient a killer a giant, mutated cat must be.

Jade draws her gun from her sylladex, pops on her night-vision goggles with her wardrobifier, and walks on silent paws (feet, she has feet, not paws) into the cave.

It probably knows she’s here. She’s ready for it, anyway. Jade can’t let it kill again. She’ll capture it, kill it if she has to, bring it back to show them that there _was_ something and it was dangerous and she was right.

Jade ducks her head, steps over a broken stalactite, and finds herself in an artificially widened part of the cave. She has to stop and admire it, mouth half-open in amazement.

Half of the damn cliff must have been hollowed out for this. It’s a massive, empty space in the rock, clawed out little by little, deep gouges scoured into the stone that makes up the walls and floor. Bones are scattered about, mostly arranged in the corner, some chewed through, some whole. With a drop in her gut, Jade recognizes troll and human skulls, as well as some of cattle, other wild animals. The beast must have been here for years. Decades, maybe, but no cat lives that long.

But the most striking is the patterns on the walls. Color everywhere, just a little too fuzzy to make out with her night-vision goggles on, but it’s got _patterns_. Jade sees, in one corner, a _grid_ of interlocking squares. Clear signs of… intelligence.

She turns, taking in as much as she can. There’s a bed of pelts and not-quite-dry grasses in the corner. It’s supplemented with strangely shaped rocks, and… porcelain. Jade approaches the bed, kneels to see it, and takes in her hand a teacup, whole and unbroken. 

Jade hears the soft thud of paws on grass outside.

She turns to see it silhouetted in the last light from outside, fading even as she sees it, those last glimmers shining off wicked, straight claws, and deep, glowing eyes, as the monster looks straight through her. And Jade has the bone-deep, numbing feeling of being _wrong_ , because this is not a cat.


	11. Care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake sticks with John. Dave lets Karkat go.

Jake leads the way as John wanders in behind him, hammer hanging loosely in his fingers. Jake has both guns out, but pointed down, ready to shoot but not willing to compromise gun safety to do it. Jade has kicked his butt enough times for him to take trigger safely seriously! 

The forest starts without much change from the rest of it. They've been going through streets awhile, but slowly, buildings give way to building equipment, which is long-forgotten and rusted through. Jake finds something is turning his head from side to side - perhaps just nervousness from his last encounter with an empty town. The ghosts that waited there, and the whisperer that flanked them, still linger at the back of his mind.

But he's ready now! And besides that, John is guarding his glutes, and he'd trust John with most anything.

Jake whistles to get his attention, earning a, “Dude, you can just say my name,” from John, and points, gun cockeyed in his hand, towards a series of bones covered in grass and vines. 

“Look at that,” he whispers, delighted by the spooky prospect and the generally super near look of irises growing from the eyehole of a trill skull. “Something happened here.”

“No shit,” says John, but it's less angry than awed. “There's a huge skull over here, come check it out.”

Jake is not a man to pass up a huge skull. He takes his focus off the tree line and trots his way over to John, who's crouched beside a bed of tall, dry grass in the shade of one of the huge construction robots. He braces his hands on John’s shoulders to look. Ooh, very firm! Clearly this is a man just full of man grit and muscles. The ideal male body, one might say. Jake may not like it, but there it is.

He reaches to touch the fanged skull with the muzzle of his gun. It has a slim, flat face and a rounder set of orbitals, so it's probably some sort of feline.

“Looks like there was either a mountain of kitty litter or a man-eating beast! Like in The Ghost and the Darkness. Does this look particularly lionlike to you? Take a gander.”

“I'm already gandering, and no, not really. I think they have bigger jaws.”

Jake didn't know that. Hm.

He should talk to Dave more about bones and their builds. He mostly just does skulls for the cool factor.

“Jolly good thinking! I can't say I disagree.” He chews on his lower lip. “What about its death? Particularly grisly?”

John shrugs, which reminds Jake to stop leaning on him. He glances to the trees again. Gosh, isn't that a lot of squirrels in there! He waves to the squirrels, which seem like nice little creatures. He doesn't know much about them, himself. 

“Jake. I don't know anything about bones. You should have brought Dave if you wanted bones. Or Aradia - I thought she would have something to do with this. Isn't that, like, her thing?”

“Yes!” Jake decrees, offering John a hand up out of his boundless empathy. (Haha! See! He's improving! The girls can just suck toes, he's great at considering others’ feelings.) “But she's quite a busy lady. I think she said last time she was going to go off to tame the beast, whatever that means. I think I might know just what it means, if you get what I mean, hubba hubba.” He winks at John.

“Gross,” John says flatly. “that’s just gross and I never want to hear it again. Either way, you should have just let me off the leash, I know you don't need my help. 

Jake feels weird about that. It gives him a feeling like he's looking at himself when they were sat on that dastardly platform, like he should be doing something but he doesn't know how to make it any better. Maybe it… wasn't all poppycock, after all.

Does John feel bad? Is that what this is? He doesn't know how he can fix that, because John is, like, his grandpa-Dad, or he’s John’s? Jake never really got that nonsense, it all goes in one ear and out the other, especially when nobody even raised him in the first place. This whole family stuff is weird. He wishes they knew him growing up instead of coming in out of nowhere for no reason later, especially Jade, because he remembers Jade very, very differently from how she turned out. Rightly so, he guesses. He was three when he had to burn her. 

“I needed you here, quash that nonsense,” Jake scoffs, waving with his gun like a lady might a fan in a cool movie about samurai, shortly before using the fans to catch swords like a real hero, unlike her cowardly bodyguards, who die. “I won't have it, because it's the very bottom of the pit called trash. I needed someone who could do all the smashing, and might I say, so far you're doing a smashing job of it all. That's brass-tacks facts, chap!”

John blows out a breath and heads for the forest.   
_

“I’m stealing him,” Terezi declares, with a mouth full of knives and intent full of bad.

It takes a moment for Dave to formulate a response. He taps his chin, tilts his head, and finally decides on a clear, calm, “No?”

“Bold of you to think you have a choice,” Terezi and Dirk say at once. Neither of them look at the other as they high-five. Dave regrets letting them speak to each other. He should have known they would end up in hell.

Realistically, no, he can’t stop Terezi from taking Karkat. But something’s pulling at the back of his mind, something he’s forgotten, and Karkat is just the best there is when it comes to batting the cobwebs out of his head with a broom and a lot of swearing. No spiders allowed in Dave’s mind palace. Only clear, sparkling marble, and, uh, gems and stuff. You know, whatever palaces have.

Fuck, Calliope would be super helpful. She knows what’s in palaces.

Has Jane ever been in a palace? A real one? He doesn’t know, but she seems like the type. 

Dave should be in a palace.

“I need him,” Terezi tells Dave, as Karkat, rather relaxed, for, you know, Karkat, checks his sylladex to make sure he has all his things. “And he can talk to you and everything. It’s not like he won’t be indulging in your tasteful red text every hour of the night.”

“I will not, you bulgemuncher. I’d say licker but you’d take it as a compliment,” Karkat mutters, still half in his sylladex. Even getting rid of that dumbass coder modus or whatever hasn’t eased his sylladex troubles. His new vocab modus gives him just as much of a headache, but Dave figures that’s because he keeps forgetting the words he used, because the paranoid son of a bitch knows too many words for everything.

Dave wiggles his fingers, shakes out his whole arms. Dirk tilts his head up a little, but doesn’t offer assistance. He’s letting Dave handle it. Dave appreciates it.

“Do you have to? Like, I was thinking he could help me go over some of the shit I figured out,” Dave says, turning to follow Terezi with his eyes while she invades his house. Most of the foster wigglers and human children are gone now, but some are still wandering, and Dave watches a future-Dave appear just in time to catch the clock as it is batted off the wall by the floating psionic. What’s his name again. Statly? “I can’t really do it alone, my brain is fucking fried.”

“You’ve had time,” Terezi sniffs dismissively. “Besides. Orange Creamsicle is here to help!”

“That’s me, Orange Creamsicle,” says Dirk as he putzes around on his phone. 

Dave takes a breath and tries another tactic. Eventually, one of these has to work. Or, y’know, he can just go fuck himself.

“Well - you’re not exactly known for your care with the lives of others, especially when it’s people I happen to like, _a lot_. So - let me come with you, I can -”

“Do not leave me alone with children in your house,” Dirk states, not even a request. Shoots him down just like that. God, what a fucking asshole. Having fucking… priorities and shit. Who even does that nowadays? Not Dave.

Dave curls his fingers in his hair, taught and worried, and Karkat comes around with his bag to carefully disentangle it them, like a doting mother. Mm. Moms. Now is not the time to think about moms, but man is it nice to think about moms every once in awhile. (He’s on this track because his brain is fried, but hey, moms are always good.)

“I will be back so soon,” Karkat promises, kissing both of Dave’s cheeks. “There are kids here, so the hive won’t be quiet, and Dirk is just as good as I am with sniffing out stupid shit. I’m sorry I can’t be here to help more, but if Terezi says she needs me, she _really_ needs me.” He blinks those pretty gray eyes up at Dave. They’re starting to show the softest red flecks around the pupils. “Okay?”

Dave nods, slowly. “Yeah. ‘Sokay.”

But he makes sure to dip and kiss Karkat like in a shitty romcom just to make him squeal first.


	12. Lone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane snaps at nothing. Kanaya doesn't see anything.

Jane isn’t a fan of texting and driving. It’s just silly, and utterly unnecessary. You need to focus on the road. 

Texting and flying, however, is a completely different story. There's nothing to crash into. And as she isn’t particularly fast in the air, she might as well shoot off a few messages. She has people she needs to talk to anyway.

Dirk’s texted her.

timaeusTestified [TT] has begun pestering gutsyGumshoe [GG]

TT: Hey big momma.  
TT: Channeling Dave here, btw. Dude’s getting his mindfreak on about something or the other.  
TT: Imagine that said in an Australian accent, with delicious flakes of Dave added in. Stir the pot, and you get my greeting to you. Hot off the chili cooker.  
TT: Speaking of, I gave the last of the chili to these little brats I’m watching. 

Jane can’t help a little grin. He’s only just pinged her, and he’s already talking up a storm to no one at all. He’s just the cutest! Well, Jake and Roxy might be objectively cuter, but as of now, he’s the cutest. 

Hm, why hasn’t Jake messaged her recently?

GG: There, there, little duck, I’m home to handle you.  
GG: What is this about brats? You’re still watching Kanaya’s new fosters?  
GG: … Are you alright with that?  
TT: You know I would have said no if I wasn’t.  
GG: No, I know you’d have said yes and then freaked out, because you don’t want to disappoint Kanaya.  
TT: Look, she’s pretty much the scariest motherfucker alive. It’s like if a mama bear was also a vampire, and also super sexy.  
TT: That aside.  
TT: We haven’t talked about what’s bothering you.  
GG: Turning the tables, I see.

Jane looks up, eyes the horizon for a few moments. Still, she does eventually respond, as loathe as she is to do it.

GG: CrockerCorp is working with Icarus, Inc. to expand the Troll Kingdom’s mining resources. Building the roads, paying the contractors, and working as well as we can on reducing noise complaints are CrockerCorp’s purview on the project.  
GG: It's come to my attention that there were several wrongful deaths of the people working on it. I'm going to investigate, because I feel responsible. They were working for my company at my direction.  
GG: So there it is. Just a mystery weighing on me.  
GG: Nothing scary. Nothing special. Just the same corporate crap you get onto me about.  
TT: You know you can tell me about it. I don't like CrockerCorp, but I like you just fine.

Jane nearly throws her phone.

Months. _Months_ of mockery over her chosen field, and he chooses to act like it never happened at all. Oh, you can tell me, Jane! I'll listen, Jane! I won't be holding back disgust at the thought of you trying to regain your good name and do something good, Jane!

Her phone pings again.

TT: Fact is, there's some crazy shit going on, and it'll be best if we all support each other on this, as much as I'm reluctant to support myself with anything but a throne of swords and rock-hard robot cocks. The dildo crown is and will always be mine.  
TT: It should be even more scary because I’m willing to talk about it, obviously. No obfuscations here. I'm being serious.  
TT: Jane?  
GG: I’m here.  
GG: We’ll talk this over later.  
GG: I cannot handle it right now.  


gutsyGumshoe [GG] has ceased pestering timaeusTestified [TT]

Jane tucks her phone aside and lands. Forget this - she can walk. It’s not even very far.

_

“Black Beauty!”

The voice of Anna Sewell rings through the clearing, and Roxy, Rose, and Kanaya trot after her in an uneven triangle with Roxy as the head. She can move quick, on those crutch-supports, strange metal creations. They do seem to get the job done.

“Is this the place?” Rose asks, slightly out of breath. 

“Looks like,” Roxy says, much less out of breath. Not Rose’s fault Roxy runs around everywhere and Rose prefers to fly. Some people are just better at running than others. It’s like that, sometimes. 

The clearing itself is just a kind of grassy plain - the tree line is far from here, and the real plains don’t start for another mile past the other side of town. At least, before they got filled with trash. Kanaya looks around in interest, her ears perked for any sign of whatever ghost has Anna in such a tizzy. Do ghosts make sounds she can hear? She’d always thought that was more a rustblood thing.

There’s nothing in this clearing, though, even as Anna goes in circles like she thinks she’s going to spontaneously gain the ability to track like a hunting dog. She’s muttering to herself, and Kanaya takes the opportunity to sidle up behind Rose, check on her. 

“Is this what you saw?” she asks quietly, sneaking her hand into her wife’s. Their rings touch, soundless, and Kanaya can’t help but feel better. She really does like this whole wearing rings thing, but she’s kind of glad it’s only one. (Some things linger in her mind, when she thinks about rings and scarves. But Rose and Roxy, at least, are changing how she feels about them - scarves are pink and long now instead of stylish violet, and rings mean _love_ instead of _gaudy_ in her pan.she feels better about them.) 

“Not quite,” says Rose. “But it’s… we’re closer. We’re on the right path to fix what’s been broken.”

Kanaya can’t really pinpoint what’s been broken, though. It seems like Earth C is just fine. Sure, with a low population, but not really any different than usual otherwise. Some trash weird places, no drones, but honestly, it’s fine.

Anna turns to them. “Miss,” she says to Roxy, “can you come with me? Um, and Lady Lalonde too?”

“Daaaammn,” Roxy laughs. “What am I, then, if she’s Lady Lalonde?”

“You’re both Lady Lalonde,” Kanaya rebuffs, with a little warning in her voice. _Be kind, she doesn’t know you._ Roxy can be a lot when someone doesn’t know her.

“I just - both of you. I think we’ll have the best chance of finding him if you’re with me.”

Kanaya furrows her brow, but doesn’t argue, even as she’s momentarily confused. Why does she need only the Lalondes? A bit of an odd choice. She looks at Anna a little firmer, and when they lock eyes, Kanaya knows why.

She kisses Rose goodbye, and sets to patrol this little clearing, what she saw in Anna’s eyes troubling her even long after they are gone. That… fear. What does Kanaya have to frighten her? She’s been only kind to her the whole time, and it isn’t like she’s really outwardly terrifying - she wore soft neutrals today, for goodness’ sake. Why is Anna afraid of her?

… is it because she’s a troll?

Kanaya takes a delicate seat on a tree stump, blowing out a long breath. Some humans are frightened of trolls. Usually not carapacians, they know better, but it’s just a little hurtful anyway. She hasn’t done anything!

Kanaya shakes her head, forcing the thoughts out of her mind. She needs to focus, on waiting for them to come back.

Something shifts the branches aside, and Kanaya looks, curious.

In front of her stands a shifting mass of what Kanaya can tell is _absolutely nothing_. Its appearance shifts, from one nothingness void to another, a cloud of black and pink and blue, the colors of nothing and more. All Kanaya can make out is deep-set eyes, sad eyes, and broad, strong hands, with no claws. And its height, easily fifteen, sixteen feet tall.

It shifts as it moves, trotting in front of her first on pointy, carapaced feet, extensions of the cloud, and then on hooves, three sets trotting gallantly, and then on nothing again, not touching the ground. He’s made of soft-edged fractals, which shouldn’t exist, but here he is anyway, standing there in all his nothing-glory.

Kanaya has seen him before.

“Oh, I - I know you,” she says, dumbfounded. How had she forgotten? It had been so memorable, at the time - seeing a darkness in the woods off Jade’s farming project, and going out to meet a dark cloud in the shape of a man who apologized and told her to leave. Mysterious as anything she’d ever seen. She’d been in the middle of a train of thought, too, she’d almost put him together, he’s so terribly familiar - 

“And I, you,” says Black Beauty, in a voice that sounds like the absence of voice, difficult to make out and more difficult still to understand. “Did Anna call for me? Has something gone wrong with her supports?”

“Yes - she just left with, with my wife and her human dancestor - you’re Black Beauty.”

He smiles with a mouthful of sad, broken feelings, and she can see right through him. Somehow.

Something pulls at the back of her mind.

“We had a lovely talk,” he says. “It’s ludicrous that we haven’t had more. Perhaps again, sometime.”

Black Beauty bows, but his body is bent like he has four sets of legs, and maybe he does? When he turns, and canters into the trees, and for a moment he looks like a spider, or maybe a scorpion, with the frown she can see through the back of his head pulling down his lips.

“Wait,” says Kanaya. She knows this. She should have put it together before. “Wait!”

He’s gone in moments, the last traces of his strange, nothing-body fading from view in the trees.

And she blinks, and she forgets.


	13. Kill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jade is chased. Terezi goes to sea. Jane finds her last clue.

The woods fly by in little hops and jumps, panic fueling her senseless flight. Her feet pound the ground when she bothers to land them. Even so, she doesn’t know if it’s enough.

Jade ducks through branches and teleports to the end of her eyeline again, but this monster is fast, faster than anything she’s ever seen. Her neck still tingles where its claws sunk in before she could even think to teleport, but that’s what being caught by surprise gets you.

She can’t even run back to the village yet. She has to get this fucking thing away. Lay a scent trail, tempt it off, anything that she can. She has no trouble imagining what this would do to the village if it got loose in town square.

The thought gives her chills. She whistles, to make sure it knows where she is.

It leaps from nowhere, almost forming itself from shadow, and Jade can’t imagine how it hid this long. It’s a massive animal, easily the size of a rhinoceros, with a sloping back like a boar. Its back is furred white, almost like a lusus, but the fur has some tinges of blue that suggest a sun-bleached color. Perhaps once it was vibrant, but not anymore - now the only vibrant thing about it is the blood splattered over its jet-black forelimbs, and its glowing green eyes, with endless depths to them. Something about it pulls at her soul.

Jade hates it.

She strikes it with a palm to get it out of the way, but she’s pretty sure that just hurt her more than it. It turns on her and roars, and Jade realizes, suddenly, that it isn’t moving its face. The catlike snout she’s been watching is a mask.

What the fuck.

Jade teleports again, but the monster is pursuing her before her feet even touch the ground. She shoves off a tree to keep momentum and reappears an easy hundred yards away. 21 feet, Jade remembers. 21 feet is the minimum distance to be able to draw a weapon and fire if something charges you.

Watching the beast lunge for her with all the momentum of a steam train, she quietly amends it to 210.

The chase lasts a lifetime. But finally, finally, it starts to slow - maybe they’re reaching the edge of its territory, or maybe it’s decided not to waste time with the interloper who snooped around in its cave. Jade doesn’t stop to worry about it. She just turns in midair and throws her body miles and miles away, dropping in the middle of the Consort Kingdom and just barely keeping her head.

A few nakodiles and turtles eye her, but they mostly just scurry around. The consorts tend to keep to themselves.

Jade doesn’t have time to think about it.

She breathes, eyes closed, and takes some time to consider what in hell has just happened to her. What she’s seen.

Jade breathes in, and out, her heart still hammering in her chest. It’s going to be okay. She’s not alone - she can rely on her friends to help her, and she can figure out what to do about the monster soon.

But she needs to warn the others.

Tiredly, Jade drags herself to lean against one of the rounded buildings the salamanders prefer, and ignores the one that scurries over to flop against her in excitement. A hummingbird lands on her ear. She doesn’t have time to greet them, or she would, she promises.

Jade pulls out one of her computers, and she starts a memo.

gardenGnostic[GG] opened memo on board URGENT: PAY ATTENTION THERES MONSTERS

GG: GUYS!!!!   
GG: i cant stress enough how important it is that at least someone shows up here   
GG: theres a monster in the woods   
GG: i dont want to say i told you so but i did definitely told you so   
grimAuxiliatrix [GA] responded to memo.   
GA: Jade   
GA: Youre Alright Thank God   
GA: We Have Found It   
GA: But It Is Difficult To Observe As It Appears To Have Memory Altering Abilities   
GG: no!!!!!!   
GG: NOT THAT ONE!!   
GA: You Mean To Tell Me There Is More Than One Monster In The Same Area Of Woods   
golgothasTerror [GT] responded to memo.   
GT: Tally ho!!! You have no idea what garbage weve run into over here in the lost forest chaps.   
GT: Were taking care of it though!   
GA: We   
GA: Confusion Noodle   
GG: not that either!!! what even is that!!!!   
GG: im talking about the monster that keeps painting blood everywhere and EATS TROLLS   
GT: Golly gee that sure is something. Uhhh we dont have that here im afraid.   
GT: John and i are tearing through looking for a lost boy! Haha! Hes probably fine but the beasties here sure are an incorrigible breed of angry.   
GT: they keep bitinbg everyone ow fucking mole   
ectoBiologist [EB] responded to memo.   
EB: why am i joining this memo.   
EB: holy fuck this screen is so bright. i can see like fifty feet. it was so dark, why did i wait this long.   
GG: JOHN!!!!!   
GG: HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE WE TALKED TO YOU!!!!   
GA: I Still Have Questions   
GA: Can We Get Back On Topic   
twinArmageddons [TA] responded to memo.   
TA: eheheh good luck wiith that KN.   
GG: oh my gosh we dont have time for this!!   
GG: the monster is in the forest near the farming project!!   
GA: No Its By The Town Of Aradiaxa   
GT: Im pretty sure its in here.   
TA: dude2.   
TA: there2 clearly more than one fuckiing mon2ter.

_

Boats are for seadwellers.

Terezi leans against the prow of the ship, occasionally tasting the air. She’s not enjoying what’s happened so far, but she has to deal with the overbearing salty spray and the lack of sound save for crashing waves and idle chatter. Originally, she’d thought she may have to commandeer a ship herself.

But then, that’s what Karkat is for.

He’s in the middle of a heated argument down the deck, chattering with Sollux about some kind of useless thing she doesn’t care about and prompting the sailors she’d hired to explain more about whatever the hell it is they’re saying. Something about Karkat is so disarming and so much fun, the sailors will pretty much tell him anything. It’s why Terezi grabbed him for this - he’s the most useful for getting loose lips.

Now she just has to hope they don’t sink any ships.

“What do you mean, it goes black. Like, the light just fucking dies?”

“No,” says the sailor, a slim little thing who seemed to specialize in crawling all around the ropes and trying to sneak up on Terezi. He smells of seawater and lime soda. “The water just goes black, and thick, like gel.”

Karkat scoffs. 

Sollux scoffs too, in a different noise. “It doesn’t turn into gel. It just gets thick because she’s got an aura around her, stupid.”

Terezi had invited him along, as well. The problem with that is that Sollux is a terrible troll to have when you want people to open up to you. She’s never met a troll that would piss people off faster on purpose, including Eridan fucking Ampora, and that’s saying something. Sollux is here because he knows what the fuck is going on. He won’t open his mouth, but Terezi can tell. She can taste the knowledge in his twin, pointed ears. Why he won’t say anything - that’s what she’d like to know.

“I’ve seen her. Have you, you yellow-tongued bastard?”

Okay, that’s going to be an issue.

“Shut up,” spits Karkat, suddenly, and she can hear the sudden rush as he gets in Sparkly Lime Soda’s face. “Don’t start that shit. Literally millennia of work and the fucking troll race can’t get past a creatively taintchafing hemocaste problem? What the fuck were we doing, then?”

Lime shuffles. Terezi turns, moves down to the deck, and stands behind Karkat. She lets herself smile, all her pointy teeth on display for Lime Disappointment, while Karkat is none the wiser. It’s kind of funny. He’s a human - what’s he doing spouting casteist slurs? Terezi thought humans got weird about that.

“No, no, let him try,” Sollux snarks, tapping on his phone with boredom. “It’ll be a riot. I may not be the most powerful nutrition-scoop bender in the whole world but I bet I can still have a blast throwing him overboard.

“Do you short out when you hit the water?” Lime Soda sneers, and Terezi can tell exactly the moment he sees her, because of how he stops breathing for a minute.

She takes more pleasure in that than perhaps she should. 

“Quiet, all of you,” snaps Karkat, “and you included, Terezi. It’s like herding meowbeasts in here.”

“Speaking of, Jade’s tried to chase a meowbeast up a tree, but it got way, way bigger than her,” Sollux comments, half paying attention. Terezi takes out her phone to check.

gallowsCalibrator [GC] responded to memo.   
GC: 1 S33 TH4T TH3R3 1S 4 HUNT 4FOOT! DO3S TH3 M1GHTY DR4GON N33D TO 4SS1ST?   
GG: if we knew what we were hunting that would be swell!

Oh, her delicious, neon green. She doesn’t taste as much like salt and sweat and determination over text. It’s a sad thing to miss out on.

GC: 1 S33. 1’LL H4V3 TO G3T MY CL4WS ON TH3 P3RP3TR4TORS!  
GA: That Sounds Lovely But We Still Dont Know What They Are  
GA: And Also Why They Are Doing What They Are  
GA: Also Also, Where They Are And How They Got Here  
tentacleTherapist [TT] responded to memo.  
TT: Indeed. On top of that, we have a good few problems that need handling other than that, such as how to kill John. Anything done by Jade, Dave, or I would be considered just, considering what he’s put us through lately.  
EB: OHHHHHHHH MY GOD. I WAS JUST IN MY HOUSE YOU COULD HAVE JUST COME.  
TT: Nevertheless. The monster thing does seem slightly more pressing.  
GT: Im afraid im nowhere near any beasties other than this tree full of sloths! Oh and the mountain lion.  
TA: lol  
GT: As it is, john and i are very busy! Grandma do you need our help because well be back in two shakes of a lambs tail but we are mid adventure. Its like trying to ask a lad over while hes mid coitus! Just not done!  
EB: uh. i don’t approve of what he just said, for the record.  
TT: We all wish he didn’t.  
TA: holy 2hiit AA iis goiing two love thii2.  
GC: 1’M 4FR41D OUR D34R3ST SC4RL3T WOND3R 4ND TH1S L1TTL3 SH1TTYM4N 4R3 BOTH OUT ON TH3 OC34N W1TH M3! TH3Y W1LL 4LSO NOT B3 4BL3 TO H3LP.  
TA: ii could fly u2 back.  
GC: YOU WON'T.  
TA: alriight ii won’t.

“Uh,” says Karkat, who has been shockingly quiet throughout this whole misadventure.

“Hush, Delicious Cherry Crumble. The law has to clear some things up.

“Oh, by the Gods,” whispers Daiquiri and Spritzer, Lime Soda’s best friend.

Terezi lifts her head from the memo.

The salt and blue of the air has degraded, slowly, and then sudden enough for even her to notice it. When she tastes the air again, there’s more than salt. She senses a disturbance in the water.

Terezi is grabbing a rope and leaning over the side in moments, which prompts a strangled yelp from Karkat and the quietest little “Hm” from Sollux. Neither of them can stop her.

She plunges her graspers into the chill water, her face soaked by the spray splitting from the boat’s hull, and takes a deep sniff.

Black.

Ebony black. Like black currant custard and a deep, red wine, but without the alcoholic kick - instead all there is is salt. The texture of it over her fingers is like seaweed. It isn’t gelatinous, but Terezi can see how a fool could make that mistake - it’s more the texture of a seastinger ray, or sharkskin, from the smooth direction. Soft, fibrous.

She gets a handful and tries to taste it, but the ship bucks, and she almost loses her grip on the rope. Terezi snarls, but pulls herself up back onto the deck with a yelp. Karkat is there to catch her. Isn’t he the sweetest little cherry pie?

“She’s here,” Terezi huffs. “It’s not gelatin, that was stupid, I knew that was stupid. It’s something in the water. Perhaps a thousand tiny tentacles ready to plunge into our orifices and start a hemorrhage.”

Lime Soda hits the deck in a dead faint.

“Either way, she’s here.”

Terezi types with wet fingers and a salty tongue, backreading mostly by instinct as she clacks her claws on the delicate screen, hard enough to gouge.

GT: I really just dont understand why you cant handle it.  
GG: it nearly killed me! it actually did if it wasnt for my god powers!!! stop fucking around and pay attention, i just fucking DIED!!!!!  
TT: It got a hold of you?  
GG: yes  
GG: just barely  
tipsyGnostalgic [TG] responded to memo.  
TG: awshit. that’s a bad bargain  
TT: Fuck.  
TT: Okay.  
GA: Rose I Know You Are Upset But  
turntechGodhead [TG] responded to memo.  
GA: Perhaps It Is Not Wise To Jump Into Fear And Anger Just Now  
GA: This Is A Big Fucking Issue Obviously And It Necessitates Careful Consideration  
TG: they both have their claws out 4 this btdubs  
TG: wait  
TG: you saw the beast  
GG: i saw what??? Dave do you know about this???????????  
TG: do i know about this  
TG: more do i know its fucking real i thought that was an earth c version of a werewolf i should have fucking known youd get into it with it  
TG: fucking turf war over here bark bark this is my tree i pissed on it  
GG: DAVE!!!!!  
EB: dave now isn’t the time, can you stop being a dumb fuckass for like ONE second.  
TA: who the fuck 2ay2 fucka22.  
TG: ok the beast is one of like six extremely widespread superstitions  
TG: maybe seven  
TG: were talking endeki the apprentice chessmaster the beast the smiling god and some other dumb shit  
TG: theres like a haunted forest  
TG: less haunted than it is everything that lives there has one mind like some fucked up superentity  
GT: Hate to interrupt a fella on a monologue but would this forest be in the north and all the animals hate you?  
TG: uh  
TG: yes  
GT: Well butter my ass and call me a biscuit.  
EB: yeah. jake and i are already there.  
TG: are you fucking me right now  
TG: just kidding you couldnt because you never leave your house  
GC: 1 DON’T H4T3 TO 1NTERRUPT B3C4US3 YOU’R3 4LL B31NG STUP1D.  
GC: TH3 BO4T 1S CURR3NTLY SURROUND3D BY 4 G14NT S34 MONST3R.  
TG: okay now i KNOW youre fucking me  
TG: karkles how could you betray me for her  
GC: NOT 3V3RYTH1NG 1S 4BOUT YOU D4V3.

_

Jane shuts her phone off, tired of its incessant buzzing.

“Sorry,” she tells the project head, a young, distinguished Prospitan. Not that age really means much to a carapacian - they _are_ all made with cloning. Jane doesn’t know everything about it, but she knows enough to know that for them, age really is just a number. “God business. But I want to know more. What were the circumstances of his death? Do you mind telling me? I know it’s confidential, but…”

But she’s Jane fucking Crocker, and no one is standing in her way. Although they’re welcome to try.

She may hate to think about it, but, realistically, there’s a reason she did so well as an Heiress. She’s well-suited for it. Not only was she raised with the intent of making her life into the perfect coroporate mold, she was always meant to become the Condesce’s puppet. 

She thinks that maybe something in her was waiting for the switch to flick off. Something deep down she doesn’t want to acknowledge. And so, she’ll take a page out of her grandfather’s book, and she won’t.

The carapacian Building Supervisor happens to have the name of Banal Surrogate, or BS, and Jane finds that quite convenient. She taps her little claws together out of nerves. Jane’s honestly impressed with her spatial awareness - those are sharp points, surprising to see that she can balance them so perfectly against each other. The slightest movement would slip them off. 

“Miss Crocker,” she says, in a low, raspy voice, supplementing with gesture, as all carapacians do. “I’m afraid that I’ve told you all I know. He and his whole team just - disappeared. We found traces of blood at the scene, but -”

Jane’s heard just about enough of dead ends. “Then where’s the scene?”

“Ex - excuse me?”

“The scene. Where did it happen? In the middle of camp? In the housing project? On the edges?”

Building Supervisor looks over her shoulder. Jane follows the gaze, and she sees the tarp, half-draped over some kind of machine with a long bar full of saws in front of it. It’s almost cartoonishly corporate, the kind of thing you’d see in a kid’s movie about the forest, lacking nuance and understanding of what it takes to support billions of people.

(There are not billions of people on Earth C, and it makes Jane nervous. They’ve had plenty of time, so where do the people go?)

“What’s that,” Jane asks. Most of construction stilled the moment that Jane landed in the middle of the side and demanded to see the manager, but the layer of silica dust Jane’s keen eyes spot on the seat and controls mean that it hasn’t been used. Why this one, and not all the others? That’s got to be it.

“It’s - it’s the mulcher, ma’am, it’s what Mr. Samtan used before his accident -”

Jane’s already walking over. She doesn’t wait for BS to finish BSing her - they don’t have time for this. A troll is dead and Jane wants to know _why_.

She pulls off the tarp with one hand, and feasts her eyes on the warped, destroyed metal of the hood, melted to the point that it had dripped down over the smallest front tire. She can make out faint clawmarks in the very edge of the destruction, easily a handspan between each one. The dust below her feet has been disturbed, but she takes a knee anyway. There is no life beneath this dirt. This and this dirt only, whereas there are weeds and little flowers and seeds germinating under everything, worms and beetles and bugs in the cleared space behind them, but everything here is gone. It has been burned.

“Banal Surrogate,” says Jane, her voice low. “You know what happened to this troll and his team, and you’re keeping it from me.”

The carapacian’s voice reaches a fever pitch, even as a crowd gathers to gape, far enough away Jane cannot make out any faces. They are hiding in numbers, but this is not an inside job. 

“It’s nothing we can prove,” she gasps, bringing half a claw cupped into her chest in a motion Jane recognizes as the Heart-worshipping equivalent of crossing oneself, “and no one saw, no one saw him do it but we know it’s him, it’s why the reserve crew quit, people don’t want to die for this -”

Jane knows what she means, but she can’t accept it. This Banal Surrogate believes in her heart that some creature has attacked and killed the troll she’s after, and several more besides. It’s impossible. Jane would know if something like that was here.

But something killed these people, and it rests on Jane’s shoulders to find out what.

“Slow down,” Jane soothes, putting a hand on BS’s shoulder. “Surrogate. I promise you that whatever happens, we will figure this out.”

The hubbub grows, and Jane sees something, out of the corner of her eye.

The site is mostly quiet. Her arrival had ceased all production, all expansion, and she’s struck by the silence of it. Usually the raucous roaring and joking of a construction site lasts long into the evening, but this is the first time she’s ever seen one stop during the day. Even the crowd isn’t that loud - a feast of whispering, at the most.

But she hears something. A high-pitched tone that she detects more with her jaw than her ears, mostly above hearing range. It definitely would be, for most trolls, a supersonic sound - they hear more in lower ranges than higher. Her eyes sweep the site, and she sees something. A minute little detail that leads her to her quarry.

The open door the Banal Surrogate had rushed out of is closed, now. Three slight scratches, each a handspan apart, mark the wood.

She turns, and she pushes the stranded equipment out of the way with a hearty shove, so she can look behind everyone, at the open space in the middle of the site that’s only filled with tables.

Something stands there - something Jane cannot comprehend. It glows with a pure white light, and the eyes in its gnarled, toothy face are closed in concentration. A small wrinkle lays between its feathered brows from it. A row of wavy quills hides the dome of its head, and its great, quadripedal body is some off-white color between pearl and cream, mixed like ice cream with sworls of a pinkish mauve. Its back and swaying tail, coated with feathers and spines, twists horribly in the middle, just enough to show off teeth where they should not be.

Jane knows, in this endless instant, what she is looking at, and Endeki opens cream-and-black eyes.

And then, the site detonates.


	14. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanaya is resolute. Dave jumps into action.

GG: so wait  
GG: theres FOUR monsters???  
TG: six at least my dude  
TG: endeki is the worst one though at least as far as i can tell  
EB: this is going too fast for me to even get offended. Can you guys slow down so i can yell at you already????????  
arachnidsGrip [AG] responded to memo.  
arachnidsGrip [AG] left memo.

Kanaya stares at the brightness of the screen for a moment more. She doesn’t want to think about it. Not when they’d gotten so far, and then suddenly, everything was crumbling around them. 

Apparently they’d spotted Black Beauty, but she and Rose both don’t remember a thing. Roxy won’t say a word, and Anna just thought that she’d done what needed to be done. They’d dropped her off without another word, and that was that.

Kanaya doesn’t have any feelings about Anna, and resolves to keep it that way. 

“Roxy,” Rose says. “If you know something, say it.”

Roxy just shakes her head and taps on her little phone. Her fingers look so thin against it. “I’m just worried ‘bout everybody else. Sounds like things could be a lot worse in the monster section.”

“It got Jade,” Rose says, and Kanaya realizes she still has her lipstick out.

Well. she might need it. Who knows.

TG: yeah rose n kan are suuuper mad rn  
TT: Not really helpful, Roxy.  
EB: i’m mad too but i don’t even have time to be mad because you guys are so!! fast talking!!  
TG: dude i think were all fucked here  
UU: dave! is there anything we need to worry aboUt right now?  
UU: i want to make sUre everyone is alright before we go aboUt getting in sqUabbles with each other!  
GT: A wise decision! Always trust a lady with a skull head. Who isnt here?  
EB: everyone’s here right?  
apocalypseArisen [AA] responded to memo.  
AA: not everyone :(  
TT: Fuck.  
TG: what  
EB: what’s happening?  
GA: Jane Is Not Here And Also Not With Any Of The Groups  
GA: Correct  
AA: i cant say anything but to quote one of our lovely little lambs  
AA: spoilers  
UU: ah, fUck.  
TT: Jane’s been freaking out about something for approximately a million years. It has to do with CrockerCorp, but she just got mad at me when I tried to talk to her about it.  
TT: And she can definitely see this.  
GC: 1T 4PP34RS SH3 H4S TURN3D OFF 4LL POSS1BL3 MOD3S OF COMMUN1C4T1ON.  
TA: why would 2he do that?  
EB: she’s mad at dirk.  
TT: Yeah, this is probably on me. Shit. I mean, what are the odds of  
TT: Okay, Dave looks super upset so probably high.  
TG: endekis biggest thing is how much he hates expansion

Kanaya knows this.

GA: My Fostered Wigglers Were Saying Such Things  
GA: To Go Where The Forests Burn  
TG: and where the swill spills into the ocean and thats where youll find him  
TG: yeah  
TG: show of hands who knows what the biggest producer of waste on the planet is  
GT: Cows?  
TG: god you airheaded hunk of a man  
TT: Totally inappropriate.  
golgothasTerror [GT] left memo.  
EB: yeah that was mean.  
TG: fuck sorry we dont have time  
AA: you really dont!  
AA: and the odds are against you  
TA: AA  
TA: can ii  
AA: you know the answer is no  
AA: but you have to do what you can  
AA: we all have to  
GC: 1 SM3LL COLLUS1ON 4FOOT.  
EB: yeah this is weird.  
TG: sollux this is really really important  
TT: The Pine Guardian expansion of the Human Kingdom has recently come under fire for not filling out an EDA, as well as for the mysterious deaths of six of their workers, all in the same incident.  
TT: It’s also where Jane was going.  
AA: and its where he is too  
AA: you know what you have to do

Kanaya feels chills. She locks eyes with Rose, and they grab each others’ hands.

“Roxy,” Rose says. Kanaya lets her handle it. “You stay here. You have the best odds of -”

“Finding BB, I know.” Roxy blinks, twice. “Don’t - just bring her back safe. I know I can’t go when I can talk to him, but just bring her back safe. I’ll kick your ass if you don’t.”

Rose smiles.

Kanaya checks the memo one last time.

TT: Kanaya and I are already on the way.  
TT: I would recommend at least one more, just in case.  
EB: jake and i are on the other side of the fucking planet.  
EB: i could maybe get there but i can’t leave him here and he’s  
EB: well he’s freaking out right now but my point stands.  
GC: L1T3R4LLY B31NG 4TT4CK3D BY 4 S34 MONST3R.  
UU: i cant get there in time!!  
GC: 1’M T3XT1NG 1NST34D OF H3LP1NG K4RK4T BUT H3 C4N H4NDL3 H1MS3LF. 1T’S WH4T H3 DOES.  
TA: lol 2ame except ii’m not a wimp and ii can multiita2k  
TT: Dave and I are going. We’ll fly.  
TT: Rose, your location services show you’re closer. Do your best. Please.  
TT: I know.  
AA: she will :)  
AA: ive been waiting for this for a long, long time  
TG: and you couldnt fucking say anything?  
AA: spoilers  
UU: yoU know, this was mUch more fUn when i was on the other side of it UnU  
_

Dave holds Dirk’s hand as they both rocket across the sky.

It feels cowardly, somewhere in the back of his mind, to seek comfort in Dirk’s hand, but it feels even more selfish. Jane’s not _his_ best friend, not his girlfriend, as much as he might have eyes for her some days. Dirk is the one who needs encouragement here. 

But hell if he knows how to broach that subject. 

Dave gives it a shot, squeezing Dirk’s hand tight to get his attention. It doesn't… really work, though. Dirk just keeps staring at the horizon.

“Dirk,” says Dave, voice a little taught. Then, again. “Dirk!”

He hums, but the wind steals it in cutting-cold claws and whips it away behind them. Dave takes it as permission to go on.

“Dude, you have to be - it’s fine.” Yeah, that sounded like shit. Bzzt, try again, Strider. “Nothing’s going to happen to Jane. Even if we take a little too long, Rose and Kanaya will be there, in like, two minutes. Maximum. It’s going to be okay, they have transportalizers right by where they are.

Dirk keeps staring. Dave wills himself to go faster. How can he just do this without talking? It feels so strange, and he’s way quicker than Dave. 

“She’s going to be okay. And we’re gonna figure out what the fuck Endeki is, and we’re gonna beat its ass. Got it?”

Dirk lets out a low little breath, but he nods, minutely. Dave tries to feel better, but he has the sinking feeling that it was just for his own benefit. Fuck does he hate the idea of that. He can’t let Dirk freak out about this, not when he’s already freaking out, and Rose and Kanaya are _definitely_ freaking out. He doesn’t even have time to get used to the fact that whatever Jade saw _fucking killed her_. He doesn’t like to think about it.

No one does, though, do they?

His phone rings, and Dave feels like that’s maybe a bit of a strange choice, considering everything else that’s going on right now. Whatever it is must be too important to be communicated over text - so he puts in one headphone and answers the call.

“Hey.” Nothing more. Nothing extraneous. He doesn’t have time for extraneous, they need to tell him what he need to know and tell him now.

Rose’s voice. Communicating bad things, because why is life easy?

_”Dave, everything is gone.”_

“What the fuck do you mean, gone?! It was there, we know it was there, and it’s just - it disappeared?”

The wind is almost too loud to hear her. They’re so close. So fucking close. But Dave knows right as Rose tells him, because a pillar of smoke is rising from the horizon, faint as a ghost against white tile.

 _“There’s been - an explosion, of some sort. I’ve tried to See, but I don’t see any evidence of Jane being here. There’s - someone died here. A lot of people died here.”_ Dave grits his teeth, and hears Kanaya’s voice, just a distant murmur through the shitty receiver. _“What?”_

Rose stops talking and Dave about loses his mind.

“Rose, what the fuck - it exploded? Is it just fucking flattened? Are we talking Flat Stanley or a pancake?! Wasn’t there, like - construction equipment, anything?”

 _“Some - “_ She’s out of breath when she comes back, but it doesn’t do anything to release the tight knot of tension in Dave’s gut, like his intestines tried to play limbo with his gallbladder all at once, and they all slipped and fell like he did when he was trying to play with Bro before he knew better. _“Some of the people. They’re alive. Completely unhurt. We think Jane revived them, but we don’t know where she is now.”_

“Jane’s alive,” he says, and looks at Dirk. His brow smooths over. “Well, where - where is she? Where could she have gone? Fuck it, we’ll be there in a second, hold on -”

Kanaya yells, loud enough for Davee to make it out, _“I see her!”_ and then the call drops.

Fuck his phone anyway. Dave puts it back, and they head for the smoke, beelining in the most honest beeline he’s ever seen. 

They stop above the carnage, and Dave turns his eyes to the burned trees at the edge of the blast. Yeah, nice going, dipshit. This is a great way to save the forest. Sounds like Endeki is more crazy than anything.

“They saw her,” Dave tells Dirk, his eyes still set in the trees, but the foliage becomes too thick for him to see much quickly, and it’s hard to try and pick anything out between the trunks. “She’s alone, and she’s probably okay.”

Something white moves, high enough in the trees to be above most of the leaves, and Dave zeroes in on it.

“There’s the fucker. Hold on, I’ve got it If I just -”

“Dave,” says Dirk, quietly. “You’re not paying attention.”

His eyes go back to Dirk, and then, down, where his shaded eyes are focused. The blast zone.

It takes him a moment to see it, see the shape in the ground, etched in as if a child did it with a giant stick from the sky. The blast shapes it perfectly - and that does explain the light smoke, doesn’t it? It isn’t smoke at all. It’s energy.

“Fuck,” Dave says.

Below them, burned into the ground, is the perfect shape of the symbol of Hope.


	15. Join

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone comes together.

Whatever is about to happen, Terezi is a little frustrated by the fact she can’t see it.

She’s sure the image of the beast rising cinematically from the waves, causing the water to roil around them like it’s bubbling with malice in a witch’s pot, is a hell of a sight, and it’s probably really cool. As it is, all she’s getting is jet black and seaweed and delicious chalky candy, like human smarties. Some pastels, maybe?

“So does it have hands?” she asks Sollux.

“Dude, do you think I can see this?”

“Oh, yeah.” She snickers. “Get fucked, idiot.”

“The blind leading the blind,” snipes Karkat, “would be great if you guys would lead each other over _here_ , where a giant monster is about to eat the ship, and - I don’t know, it’s got - its head has like, a coral crown on it or something? Fuck, I don’t need to describe it to you, just do something!”

“Yeah, I can’t captain a ship,” says Terezi. She doesn’t feel that bad about this. You win some, you lose some. “That’s why Lime Soda was here, and - is he still -”

“Still out,” confirms Daiquiri and Spritzer, who sounds exhausted. Another wave sloshes over the edge of the deck, and Terezi frowns as it wets her socks. Um, ew? “I put ‘im belowdecks for now, but if the ship starts to flood -”

“It won’t,” Terezi says, confidently. “Sollux. You up for a fraymotif?”

“Why is it literally only you that does those anymore?” Sollux asks, with his normal sickly-curdled cream bitterness overlaid by casual, blase yellow, like daisies. She smiles with her tongue between her teeth, the tip wiggling as if to bait prey like a snapping shellbeast.

“It’s fun.”

Karkat’s sickles fall into his palms, bringing with them the familiar scent of sweat, candy-red blood, worked leather and all the stress he’s worked into the material from sweeps of practice. It’s familiar. She finds herself thinking of the Game, back to back against the black licorice king with all his lusus traits. It felt bad to cut off the claws that smelled like her lusus’ shell, but she made it through, just like they all did.

And they will again this time.

“Ready?” Terezi asks, cane in her had with a soft little _pomf_.

“We don’t even know what we’re fighting,” Karkat points out.

“Be ready anyway,” she snaps.

She gets two steps in before she’s hit with a familiar smell.

“.... Blueberry-lemon cream?” Terezi questions no one, lowering her cane.

A fierce, animal yell comes from the sky, and Terezi can taste determin8tion on the air as Vriska Serket plummets from the clouds and impacts the reaching claw of the monster she’s been tracking - the one she’d let her crew die to before.

“Is that fucking _Vriska_?!” Karkat yells over the untrollian (but kind of trollian) clicks and shrieks that pass for this beasts’ speech. Terezi hears it shaking off the hit like one might shake their hand after catching it in a doorframe. It’s going to attack again, and, likely, it’s going to be a huge bitch about it too, but she can’t bring herself to care.

“She listened to me,” Terezi says to herself, and Vriska calls from the sky, the faintest, windswept _You f8cking b8t I did!!!!!!!_ , and Terezi can hear every single 8 she crams in there out of delight. “That’s new. That’s - I mean, really, that’s really new, I didn’t expect that at all.”

“She still needs help, though,” Sollux points out.

Oh yeah. Terezi should stop being all smug and start doing some stabbing.

They race to the edge, and Terezi flips a coin in her palm as she syncs with the honeysuckle-sweet tones of Sollux and lets rotten doom override her minty-green mind-paths, so they can beat the absolute shit out of this sea monster.

_

Jade hasn’t made it to the exploded site everyone else is so worried about. Honestly, she isn’t really sure she could make it right now. She’s exhausted beyond belief, after the rapid-fire teleporting and endless chase she’d been on all day, but she’s got to get back, stand watch so that nothing else falls to the monster that can fell a God.

She managed to get a ride from a few consorts, who were narrowly talked out of throwing her in a ditch mostly by her Godhood. It’s really annoying how some of them don’t like anyone but other consorts, Jade thinks. Who has time for that?

The little trolley-pull wasn’t that fast, but it got her to the edge of the kingdom, and by then, she had a little strength up. Jade had bowed, curtsied, and offered a gift of cucumbers to the turtles, who went absolutely batshit over it, as usual.

Who has time for that either, honestly.

Jade appears in the midst of Aradiaxa, and starts to pace the edge of town, dragging her feet more than usual. She’s fit, she always has been, but adrenaline crashes are no joke.

The town seems quiet. She sees no one out and about in this encroaching evening, and, as she walks, she checks the memo.

gardenGnostic [GG] responded to memo.  
UU: are you sUre?  
EB: yeah, it’s definitely something. we just don’t know what.  
GG: dont know what what? :B

Looks like only Calliope, Aradia, and John are still online. Vriska keeps blipping in and out on her sidebar, but she doesn’t really care, and Dirk is an idle chum. You’d think he’d remember to shut off his Pesterchum at a time like this, but boys will be boys. (Dumb. They’ll be dumb. That’s the joke.)

She’s on edge, something’s bothering her, but she can’t tell what.

EB: don’t know your BUTT.  
UU: oooooh hoohoohoo!  
GG: real mature  
GG: and dont think i didnt notice you stealing janes trademark! i did!  
UU: woUld yoU prefer i honk?  
EB: bluh.  
EB: i’m still on clown cooldown from last time.  
EB: please don’t.  
UU: honk yoUrself then.  
GG: you all are remarkably relaxed for such terrible things happening!

Her message doesn’t go through.

“We’re just doing our best,” says Aradia from behind her. Jade just about shoots her face off.

She gasps, captchaloguing her phone and putting a hand to her chest. “Aradia!” Jade yelps. “I could have killed you - how did I not notice -”

“I’m downwind,” Aradia smiles. “And so is she.”

Jade blinks.

The slightest little turn, and she sees the reflective green eyes, like discs of seaglass, hanging in the brush. Jane’s heart drops into her stomach.

“It’s not your fault,” Aradia reassures her, like she’s made some terrible mistake. Well, she guesses she has. “She’s very good at this. You have no idea how long she’s been doing it, I promise you.”

Jade’s jaw works for a moment, as she keeps eye contact with the monster that chased her to exhaustion. Her heart doesn’t even have the energy to hammer in her chest - she just stays very, very still. Jade barely even breathes, and the slow, even breaths synchronize with the beast’s as it - _she_ \- licks her chops behind the strange, flat mask.

“You knew about this?” Jade breathes.

Aradia just smiles, setting a hand on Jade’s shoulder. “The Beast won’t do anything if I’m here. Let’s walk. It’s been awhile since I’ve had my feet on the ground.” 

True to her word, Aradia drops. She’s shorter than Jade, but only slightly - they’ve got similar builds, if Aradia may be just a little heavier. Jade realizes she hasn’t spoken to Aradia in quite a long time, and she doesn’t think it’s gone unnoticed by her friend, either. It… isn’t kind of her to leave people behind like that. Like - who does she think she is? John?

Aradia tugs on Jade’s arm, and, after a moment of silence, Jade decides to trust her. Hackles raised (it feels so unnatural to turn her back on an enemy) she turns and walks with Aradia, away from the Beast, under the protection of Death’s Goddess.

“... Did I do right?” she asks, a little breathless. 

Aradia _knows_. And Jade knows she did her best, but she’s so, so tired of suffering for what she’s tried to do, from an eternity on a golden ship to dying under the claws of a monster that Aradia knew about and didn’t say. Jade has had enough, and now, with the quiet desperation of a woman who’s had enough, she demands an answer from the one woman who can.

“Of course,” says Aradia, with the knowledge that comes from being timeless, and that’s the end of it. “Of course you did.”

_

Jake fumbles with his phone to take a picture. He’s turned off the connection for now - it kept buzzing when he was trying to take the best shots - but John has his PDA, so it’s not like he’s unreachable.

A collection of snakes and birds laying over each other in looping coils stare at Jake with dead eyes. He’s no expert on pictures, but this one sure does look good as far as he can tell! Plus, it’s probably helpful evidence or something. Like taking souvenirs, but he isn’t taking anything at all. Safer that way. You don’t take things from haunted places. That brings the ghosts to you.

“Jane’s okay,” John tells him, and Jake lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. “Dirk and Dave are there, and Rose and Kanaya saw her, but I don’t know anything else. Dave didn’t tell me shit, because why would he,” he grumbles.

Jake just laughs a little, shaking his head. “Who cares? She’s alright!”

 _Who cares_ , parrots a parrot.

Jake’s blood runs cold.

“Hhhh,” he says, intelligently, and John steps up beside him. He knows he shouldn’t still be so upset by the encounter with the whisperer - he hasn’t seen it since, and he’s - he’s fine now - so he shouldn’t bother with freaking out about it. Jake is fine. He got hurt, but he’s okay, and nobody even knows about it so it’s not a big deal.

John eyes Jake, for a minute, and then pulls his arm back and hucks the hammer at the branch, full power.

The group of animals scatters with the rustle of scales on feathers, several sets of eyes still following them even as they disappear. John hops off the ground to float effortlessly, catching the hammer by its shaft and hefting it back over his shoulder. He looks at Jake, hesitates, and then asks, with deliberate care, “Ready?”

He’s such a coward.

“ _Jake._ Are you ready? We have a boy to save. A real adventure.”

“I don’t know,” Jake says, quiet, unbelieving of his own words.

John stares at him.

“I don’t know,” Jake says again. “Don’t rightly feel ready, Johnny-boy. Just kind of low-down.”

John reaches down and grabs him by the arm, pulling Jake into the air too. Jake squeaks.

“Then get off the ground,” John says, firmly. “You’re ready. We’re here to help someone, and you want to do that, don’t you?”

Jake stares at John. He has fierce blue eyes, uncombed, windswept hair - even a little touch of stubble he hasn’t noticed yet. He looks like a hero, Jake thinks, buck-teeth and all. He’s what Jake could have been, if he wasn’t so -

No.

No, he’s - he’s had just about enough of thinking like that, actually. John looks like a hero, and he looks like John. Jake’s brows furrow, a bit (bushier than John’s) and he nods, then nods again more firmly, straightening up. He lets his own flight buoy himself, instead of letting John cart him around.

“That’s more like it, c’mon,” John says, and he shoots off into the forest, where something lays wait in the shadows.

Jake doesn’t rightly know what it is, but he knows he’s going to find out, and it’s going to be an adventure.

_

Dave touches down and offers a hand to steady Dirk. _Frantic_ isn’t really a word he would ever ascribe to the way superior version of his Bro who has actual emotions, but… it’s close. A hair’s breadth from it, maybe.

“She’s okay, Rose has her,” Dave reassures him. 

“We’re standing on a Hope symbol,” Dirk says. “You _saw_ what Jake can do. Hope is a fucking huge thing, why didn’t you _say_ he was a Hope-monster?”

“I didn’t _know_ ,” Dave says, a little firmer, because that is just uncalled for. He’s been working his ass off, this is not how he wants to be treated. (No, shut up, Dirk is tearing out his own brains over not being able to find Jane, and he’s going to cool himself up a skateboard and rocket across everything until he finds her unless Dave keeps his own cool. Time to cram a lid over that screaming teapot they both call a brain and get to venting a little pressure.) 

“I - Dirk, this isn’t supposed to happen. I thought they were just fucking folk tales, like - like how the beast likes fucking sugary drinks and the Apprentice eats time - fuck, did someone meet the Apprentice? Is that going to be a problem?”

Dirk snaps his fingers. Dave listens on instinct, and Dirk gives him a vaguely apologetic look. Of course, an apologetic look on Dirk is just the way his brows and shoulders both scrunch in a little, with little to no facial change, but that’s how Dirk does Dirk. Dave gets him pretty well by now.

“Probably,” Dirk says simply. “The odds of us all finding a monster special-engineered to fuck us up is pretty low, especially at the same time when we haven’t heard anything beforehand.”

Dave blows out a long breath. That would make sense, except Dirk is, um, wrong.

“Yeah, dude, we have,” Dave says. “There’s shit about this in every church this side of Megadona. I don’t know about everybody else, but I’ve seen stuff about them before, I just didn’t… put it together. I thought it was like, the dogs and LE and shit, all the bullshit we left behind, but -”

“Isn’t it?” Dirk asks, kicking the dirt his heels are digging way too far into, causing a cloud of dust and what might be remnants of Hope energy. Something catches Dave’s eye, and he slips around Dirk to investigate, even as he keeps listening. “This is _connected to the Game_. Is it starting up again? Is it happening again?”

Dave shakes his head.

“I’d have noticed it. SBURB makes a lot of impact in the timeline, and I’m sure Rose would have noticed.”

Chilling behind a twisted hunk of metal is another Dave, dusty, dirty, and tired, with what looks like a burn in a thin line over his cheek. He jerks his thumb over to the side, and Dave shifts to check out whatever he’s pointing at.

“Rose noticed something,” Dirk rebutts, but Dave just ignores him. 

Dirk’s borrowing trouble at this point, and all the facts and carefully thought-out arguments in the world won’t sway him from worrying. Dirk just can’t handle being made into someone who isn’t in control of the situation. That’s not his fault, it’s just how he is.

Dave kneels, pressing a hand into the circle of green earth, covered in sprouts and little flowers, some of which are already wilting. He pulls the petal of a daisy off, noting the circular shape next to some fucked-up hunk of metal. He doesn’t need to travel back to figure out what’s happened here.

He doesn’t want to say it, but Dirk will figure it out if he doesn’t.

“Jane died here,” Dave says. “This is from her revival.”

Dirk takes a breath that drains all the temperature from the air.

“Not heroic enough to count. Obviously, not Just.” Dave looks over his shoulder. “They saw her. She got back up. She’s okay.”

“Why isn’t she _here?_ ” Dirk snaps, bitter and nervous and angry in all the ways Dave is most sorry for. Poor bastard. He can’t imagine how he’d feel if it was -

Yes he can. It’s the same incandescent rage he’s still pushing down again, for Jane, for Jade, for everyone who had to fucking die because a Skaia is mad jazzed for sex and kidmurder. The same kind of shit that he has to take a breath and move past, because it doesn’t fucking help to be mad about it anymore. It’s over. It’s _over_.

Threads of Hope energy wisp out of the ground with every step that crunches the dirt. Dave sifts some through his fingers, watches the slightly-burning white smoke raise into the air and disippate. 

“I don’t know,” Dave answers, dusting his hands off and pushing to his feet. He turns to Dirk, and then he freezes.

“What?” asks Dirk. “What are you looking at?”

He turns, and sees the same thing Dave did. A crackling beast with a reptilian head, eyeless, more scribbled on the air like a kindergartener’s drawing than a real thing. It spreads sparsely-feathered wings, and opens a mouth crammed with teeth, flexing its long, spritelike tail. On its head are two jagged horns.

“Is that Endeki?” Dirk asks, almost breathless, flabbergasted by this… thing. His sword is already out, the instant he lays his eyes upon it. Dave can’t help but feel something. something positive, though. Hey, he’s proud. That was a slick draw for a distressed man.

The other Dave, who wheezes at Dirk in hello, snaps a picture.

“Absolutely not,” Dave answers. “But it looks like something we should know about.”

It almost looks like Davesprite, if Davesprite was made of pure Hope, and evil.

The beast lunges, and it hits two blades at once. Just like that, they lunge into battle, sword against wing and claw, a weightless monster twisting through the air like it doesn’t exist, and the familiarity of it lets Dave finally relax.

Dirk is at his back. They have this. And then they can find Jane.

_

The forest, as so much of Earth C is lately, is unbearably in her way.

God, it makes her miss the desert. Why can’t monsters live in the desert, where they can’t hide from you and there’s nothing to be afraid of? Kanaya can’t jump in time to avoid a river, and she has to splash through a creek and narrowly avoid a patch of broken glass on the bank. It’s likely from the construction workers. 

She doesn’t know where to go. Jane disappeared in this hellish wooden maze, and it’s only Rose’s Sight that guides them along towards where they hope she is.

Kanaya isn’t afraid, but something like fear claws at the inside of her gut. Apprehension, perhaps, fed by the adrenaline of a quarryless chase. She’s not afraid, but she should be, she thinks.

Rose is here with her, and Rose knows what’s happening. Her Sight is why they knew this was happening in the first place. Kanaya takes comfort in that. As long as they all stick together, they’ll figure it out. She and Rose together are, frankly, too damn competent to fuck it up.

_Bzzt bzzt._

“That’ll be Dave,” says Rose. “Hold on, let me just -”

A see-through screen pops up, level with the side of Kanaya’s head, so she can get a look at it. How convenient. 

TG sent file lmaowhatsthisbullshit.jpg  
TG: this thing is attacking us  
TG: dont worry we win  
TG: but like what the fuck

Kanaya is thankful for the glasses Rose lent her, so they can see what in hell Dave has sent. It turns out to be much, much more important than she thought. She’s also grateful because they look wicked rad.

“What are angels doing on Earth C?” she pants, even as she leaps over a branch. God, it’s SUCH bullshit that she can’t fly. She’s still mad.

“Angels?” Rose asks, zipping past to get in front of Kanaya and point the way. She’s glowing with Light, her eyes closed even as she moves as if on strings. It’s eerie, but she knows where to go. “As in, Judeo-Christian?”

Kanaya isn’t sure what a Judeo-Christian is. She’s pretty sure it’s totally irrelevant.

“No. Angels, like - they’re consorts. They’re from the Game, but - someone killed them all. None of them are left, how are -”

“Clearly there are some left,” Rose snarks, a little cruel, but she’s as stressed as Kanaya is, and as kind as she is, she’ll let it pass. The branches whip at her cheeks. She can see it, on the edge of her vision - she pushes past Rose and pulls out her lipstick in one smooth motion, a snarl half-built in her throat.

“Doesn’t matter,” Kanaya spits. “We’ll figure it out. Once we have more time, once we find Jane - there’s - _there she is!_ ”

Rose lands on her feet in a dead sprint, and none of them, nothing in the world could stop them now, especially not some Endeki with a mouthful of useless teeth and a clawful of her friend. With a pull of the cord, Kanaya revs up her chainsaw, and she’s lunging with animal fury through the trees, ready to swing at the incoherent body of the feathered, spiny beast that dared to ruin the world they had worked so hard on making. 

_

Jane is panting hard. 

After she saw the disjointed movements of Endeki disappearing into the woods beyond, his feathered, swaying tail the last thing her eyes caught, she hadn’t been able to follow him. Jane had to turn to what she was doing.

Every gorey, twisted corpse, every burnt husk, everything had to be inspected for life. The dirt crunched under her feet as she forcibly pulled every human, troll, and carapace she could back into life. It was like trying to catch wet noodles in her fingers, dragging as many souls as she could back from being gone, and she’d wasted so much time being dead. Her back is still smoking from heat. It hurts. She doesn’t care.

Jane kisses the forehead of the last one she can, the last, shaking young woman, for the rest of the life force has faded. She’s done all she can, but it’s not enough. 

It’s never enough.

Jane turns her sights back onto the monster, the murderer that set this place alight, and she shoots off faster than she’s ever gone. She doesn’t even have to try very hard. Her eyes are keen, recently revived, and she’s still filled with leftover energy. She’s going to track him. She’s a fucking gumshoe and she’s going to find the god damn killer.

Every track, every broken branch, every leftover spark from the massive blast he’s still giving off - everything is a clue. He wasn’t going fast. She can find him. She can catch him.

This is what she was born for.

And Jane finds him, but when she sets down, she’s exhausted. Panting hard, drained of energy, barely able to keep her head on straight because of the bone-deep rage and need for vengeance singing in her veins. She pulls her fork and points it at the retreating back of the monster, and Jane yells, “ _HEY!_ ”

Everything is still.

The monster’s long, serpentine neck turns to face her. The energy that had hummed beneath his skin is dimmer now, less of a glow from within, but there it is anyway. It’s like he’s made of static, shifting, barely an outline to him at all but there’s things she can pick out.

His eyes are intelligent, she thinks. Endeki is a wise beast, carefully groomed, careful in his schemes. He’d planned that - snuck in once everything was quiet, when everyone was in one place. A general without an army, but who needs an army when you’re a bomb?

“How… _dare_ you,” she whispers, her voice taught. “How dare you do what you’ve done. I’m going to kill you, do you understand?”

And Endeki turns, now. She doesn’t know what she sees in those crazed eyes, but it’s no longer wisdom, and it’s no longer malice. His crown of horns is the quills, she notices, with two real horns, black as night, bowed back so their shadow makes a perfect U, like the classic devil. Small things missed, but his spined body and the second maw splitting open his stomach marks his tarot cards and artistic interpretations as true to life as anything. It grinds its teeth, as Endeki takes a seat, his neck twisting in the air like a regal sea monster regarding a ship, judging if its wood is worth the gum-splinters. But this monster is real.

Endeki splays his claws, his inner light casting a golden glow on the ground, and speaks without opening his many-fanged mouth. The sound reverberates in Jane’s skull, back and forth, back and forth, until she isn’t sure if he heard it with her ears or her mind.

 

“ T͂̑͑ͣ̓͂̍ͭ̅ͬ̏͏̕҉̺͖̼͖͈̙͕̻̣ ̷̵͚͙͙̦͎̟̺͎̞͚̙̼̹̘̦̇̊̓̉̂̆̍ͥͮͮ̈̔͡R̸̡̗̦̯̳̪̖͖̥̪̫͓̦͒̍͒͗̒͞ͅ ̡̜̝͖͙̳̭͓̙̣͚ͨͮͫ̐ͩ̾̂̓͋ͯ̾ͣ͘͜͡Y̶͎̺͖͓̪͔̮̺̪͇ͥ̑̎̽̓̑ͪ̀̔̔͟͟ ”

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/138449925@N02/46969091532/in/dateposted-public)

Jane doesn’t lower her fork as she stalks towards him, astounded by the sight of a monster, a true monster, and more so by its actions. Endeki stares at her as she approaches, and he could accept his fate, or he could strike at her in moments. Jane has seen what he is capable of. She will not underestimate him.

She makes to lunge.

The rev of a chainsaw breaks their mutual understanding, and all color leaches from the surroundings, as Endeki whips around like a broken marionette. Understanding crosses his monstrous face, even as his constant, evil snarl doesn’t move. Perhaps it’s the feathered brows that does it.

He stiffens, and then, with a flick of his tail, he’s gone, dashing into the trees. Kanaya and Rose enter moments later, both glowing with light and malice, Kanaya’s hiss almost drowning out the chainsaw. 

Endeki is gone.

But those horns stick in her mind, jagged, cracked monuments to time, as Jane slots together the final pieces of this puzzle. The horns, his voice, his knowledgeable eyes, clouded with monstrosity. She can’t ignore it. Jane may not know everything, yet, but she has a feeling, and she’s not going to ignore what she knows.

The clearing is filled with noise, Rose’s crackling wands, Kanaya’s saw, and Jane’s ragged pants, but none of them move, and the monster does not reappear. Jane cannot look to her unfortunate saviors. But she has to know.

"Kanaya," she says, as the chainsaw buzz finally clicks off, "when does a troll stop growing?"

A curious blink is her first answer, almost audible. It's good, because her eyes are still fixed on the broken underbrush where that monster disappeared. Rose's needle has not yet lowered, and her hair floats about her face, as the majjyks she summons swirl around her. Her eyes glow, too. Perhaps she’s Seeing something they're not. (Jane will have to compare notes.)

"It depends on the caste," is Kanaya's answer, clearly puzzled, weighted by their experience. "Different castes have different lifespans, different rates of growth."

"If a troll was kept alive. Any troll." Jane can't look away from what she's just witnessed - the strange magic of it has now fallen away, replaced by a bone-deep terror. Not for the content, but the implications it held. "If any troll could live forever, when would it stop growing?"

Kanaya goes silent, for a moment. To the side of Jane's eyeline, she sees her turn her graceful head to fix her eyes on the same underbrush that used to hold a monster.

"... Never," she answers.


End file.
